Martha and Ten - The updated inbetweens and backstories
by SciFiFanForever
Summary: The Tenth Doctor pines for his lost love, as he looks for someone to keep him under control. Another story that looks between the episodes. I have updated the story to include all the BBC books, filling in the bits between episodes, books, and back stories of things mentioned by the characters with new chapters, scenes and dialogue.
1. Chapter 1

**I have tried not to include too many spoilers for people who haven't read the books, and can highly recommend them. (The PDF versions are available at iguanasrus)**

 **Did you know that Martha had as many adventures in book form as she did on the small screen? It's been great fun blending them all together.**

 **The books are:**

 **Lungbarrow BY MARC PLATT**

 **The Monsters Inside BY STEPHEN COLE**

 **The Beast of Babylon BY CHARLIE HIGSON**

 **Sting of the Zygons BY STEPHEN COLE**

 **The Last Dodo BY JACQUELINE RAYNER**

 **Wooden Heart BY MARTIN DAY**

 **Forever Autumn BY MARK MORRIS**

 **Sick Building BY PAUL MAGIS**

 **Wetworld BY MARK MICHALOWSKI**

 **Wishing Well BY TREVOR BAXENDALE**

 **The Pirate Loop BY SIMON GUERRIER**

 **Peacemaker BY JAMES SWALLOW**

 **Martha in the Mirror BY JUSTIN RICHARDS**

 **Snowglobe 7 BY MIKE TUCKER**

 **The Many Hands BY DALE SMITH**

 **The Story of Martha BY DAN ABNETT**

 **Chapter 1**

Donna Noble was getting into her car, to start her first day as a temporary secretary at her new job in the city. She was good at her job, being able to type one hundred words a minute, and she was clever. She may not have had much of an education, but when she worked at Hounslow Library for six months, she learned the Dewey Decimal System in two days.

Just last month, she had finished a two year contract with a double glazing firm, and had taken a couple of weeks off to 'chill out' and relax with her mates by scuba diving in Spain. And then, out of the blue, the agency phoned her to see if she was available for a long term contract at a security firm in the City. 'Not arf', was her immediate reply, and was ready to bite their hand off for a chance to work in the City, that's where you got noticed and hopefully where your career took off.

'Jival Chowdry, he runs that little photocopy business in Merchant Street, and he needs a secretary,' Sylvia Noble told her daughter as she fastened her seatbelt. She didn't agree with her daughter having all these temporary jobs and no future prospects.

'I've - got - a - job,' Donna told her in an annoyed tone. 'HC Clements is in the City. It's nice; it's posh, so stop it.' She started the car and drove down the road. When they got to the 'T' junction with Ealing Road, she indicated left.

Her mother was like a dog with a bone, and wouldn't leave it, 'It won't take long, just turn right.'

'I'm going left, if you don't like it, get out and walk . . . You think I'm so useless,' Donna said, anything she did was never good enough for her.

'Oh, I know why you want a job with HC Clements, lady, because you think you'll meet a man,' Sylvia said with venom. 'City executives don't need temps, except for practice.'

This struck a chord with Donna, on a number of occasions, she'd terminated her contract early because some executive had wandering hands. 'Yeah, suppose you're right.' She indicated right, and they heard a woman screaming down the road.

'Can you hear that?' Sylvia asked her, as cars heading down the road to the right started to pull up.

'The traffic's stopping,' Donna said.

'Something must have happened.'

'Well, that decides it. I'm not sitting in a traffic jam. I'm going left.' She indicated left again and drove off towards the City, and her new appointment at HC Clements.

She dropped her mum off by the shops, and went on to find a parking place as near to the offices as she could. She had a five minute walk, and walked into the bright, airy reception of her new job.

'Donna Noble, new secretary, one hundred words a minute,' she said to the pleasant girl on the reception desk.

The receptionist looked down a list on a clipboard. 'Oh yes, Miss Noble.' She made her single status sound like an accusation of unpopularity, a curse that doomed her to spinsterhood for the rest of her life. 'You need to check in with Human Resources, which is just down the corridor there.'

'Thank you,' Donna said, pasting a smile on her face and heading in the indicated direction. The door to HR was open, and a number of people sat at desk, answering phones and working on computers.

'Can I help you?' A dark skinned man asked her as he stood from behind his desk.

'Er, I hope so,' she said with a flirtatious look. 'Donna Noble, the new, one hundred words a minute secretary,' she said holding out her hand.

'Oh yes, hello,' he said with a smile. 'Is that typing or talking?' he asked her with a cheeky grin.

'Eh?'

'The hundred words a minute.'

'Hah! Nice one . . . I'm goin' to have to watch you, aren't I Sunshine?'

'I'm Lance Bennett, head of HR,' he said as he shook her hand. 'Have a seat, and I'll make us a cup of coffee.'

 **Saint Mary's Church, Hayden Road, Chiswick, London.**

 **Six months later.**

Geoff Noble linked his arm through his daughters instead of the other way around, so Donna changed it in a bit of a huff. She was nervous, and she wanted this to go right.

'Sorry,' Geoff said, and Donna smiled, he was nervous as well.

The organist struck up Mendelssohn's Wedding March, and Geoff led his daughter down the aisle. Friends and family members looking back and smiling as an obviously happy bride walked past them. There were a few members of the congregation, work colleagues from HC Clements, who weren't that impressed, thinking that Donna only took the job to try and snare a man (as if she would ever do that).

After all, it was Lance that had come on to her, making her a coffee, her, a temporary secretary. Nobody makes a secretary a coffee, not unless they fancy them. And him being the head of HR! He didn't need to bother with her, but he was nice . . . he was funny. And so, here she was after six months of courting, he'd finally seen sense and realised that she was the woman for him.

Well, to be fair, Donna told him she was the woman for him, and asked him to marry her. 'Go on, just think about it, we'd make a great couple, and I'd get rid of the dog, and we could do up that back bedroom', she had told him. Lance didn't seem that keen at first, but she talked him around. 'Please? Oh, please? Please? Please, please, please, please, please', and he said yes.

She saw him nervously look at her over his shoulder and smile, not long now. She was halfway down the nave, when she felt butterflies in her stomach. "Wedding day nerves" she thought, but what was that golden light, had the church got some special spotlights for filming the video? Everything was going fuzzy and echoey, she started screaming.

 **TARDIS Console Room.**

'You're dead . . . officially, back home. So many people died that day and you've gone missing. You're on a list of the dead.' Tears started to well in both their eyes. Rose lost it first and tears started to roll down her cheeks.

He smiled at her, willing the tears to stop. 'Here you are, living a life day after day. The one adventure I can never have.'

She had picked up on the finality of that sentence. 'Am I ever going to see you again?' she asked him, openly crying now.

'You can't,' he stated simply.

'What're you going to do?' she wailed.

His mouth was smiling but his eyes were now crying along with Rose. 'Oh, I've got the TARDIS. Same old life, last of the Time Lords.'

'On your own,' she asked. She couldn't bear the thought of him being on his own. Who would look out for him, keep him in check?

He silently nodded at her. He couldn't speak.

'I . . .' The words caught in her throat. 'I love you,' she cried, covering her eyes to try to hide her tears.

He wanted to see her smile one last time. 'Quite right, too,' he said, and those beautiful lips formed that gorgeous smile that he missed so much.

The TARDIS on the other hand gave him a mental version of a kick on the shin. She was urging him to say it. Even if she knew it, Rose needed to hear it, and it was the least she deserved.

In an instant he knew that the TARDIS was right. He looked into Rose's eyes. 'And I suppose, if it's one last chance to say it,' he started, summoning all his courage and love for this extraordinary human standing before him. 'Rose Tyler, I love you.'

The image of Rose had faded but he carried on. 'I think I loved you from the moment I first held your hand and our time lines became fixed. And I definitely loved you when you risked yourself to save me on Satellite 5.'

He blinked away the tears and sniffed, walking around the console and setting the controls as he went. Where would he go? He didn't want to go anywhere without Rose. He'd had other companions that he'd travelled with and had adventures with, but Rose was different, she'd shown him how to have fun again, shown him how to love again, and now she'd shown him the pain of loss again.

He looked up from the console to see a red headed woman dressed like a ghost, complete with a veil.

'What?' Was his grief causing him to hallucinate?

'Who are you?' his hallucination asked. It wasn't a very good hallucination if it didn't know where it was.

'But . . .' 'if you're real, you can't possibly be here', he was going to say, but was interrupted.

'Where am I?' the ghost that couldn't possibly be there asked.

'What?' He was struggling to keep up, he'd just said a final goodbye to his soul mate, and now this, was he going mad?

'What the hell is this place?' Ooh, the hallucination was getting a bit tetchy now.

'What . . . ? You can't do that . . . I wasn't . . . . We're in flight. That is . . . that is physically impossible! How did . . .'

'Tell me where I am. I demand you tell me right now where am I?' the ghost said forcefully.

'Inside the TARDIS,' he told her honestly.

'The what?'

Was she deaf? 'The TARDIS.'

'The what?'

Was she daft? 'The TARDIS!'

'The what?'

Oh, she was a human. 'It's called the TARDIS.'

'That's not even a proper word. You're just saying things,' she said angrily.

'How did you get in here?' he asked her, she appeared to be real, and not a ghost as he'd first thought. His grief was messing with his head.

'Well, obviously, when you kidnapped me. Who was it? Who's paying you? Is it Nerys? Oh my God, she's finally got me back, this has got Nerys written all over it.'

'Who the hell is Nerys?'

'Your best friend,' the ghost said cryptically.

So, this wasn't a ghost, it was a human. 'Hold on, wait a minute . . . what are you dressed like that for?'

'I'm going ten pin bowling. Why do you think, dumbo? I was halfway up the aisle! I've been waiting all my life for this.' The Doctor ran back to the console and adjusted some more of the settings. 'I was just seconds away, and then you, I don't know, you drugged me or something!' she said accusingly.

'I haven't done anything!' he declared, as he carried on adjusting the console controls.

'I'm having the police on you! Me and my husband, as soon as he is my husband, we're going to sue the living backside off you!' She ran down the ramp to go outside to find a telephone to call the police.

He looked up from the console and saw her running for the doors. 'No, wait a minute, wait a minute, don't!' he called to her, but she wasn't listening. She opened the door and stopped in stunned silence, looking out over the nebulous remnant of a supernova, the energy from which he had just used to contact Rose.

He wandered down the ramp, hands in pockets, and stood beside her 'You're in space . . . outer space . . . . This is my space . . . ship. It's called the TARDIS.'

'How am I breathing?' She asked quietly, obviously in shock.

'The TARDIS is protecting us.'

She tried to gather her thoughts. 'Who are you?' Seemed like a good place to start.

'I'm the Doctor . . . You?'

Who was she . . . ? Hang on she knew the answer to that one. 'Donna.'

He looked her up and down. 'Human?'

'Yeah.' Hang on; what kind of question was that? 'Is that optional?'

'Well, it is for me,' he said quietly.

She let that last comment sink in. 'You're an alien.'

'Yeah.'

'It's freezing with these doors open,' she said, trying to bring some normality back to her life.

The Doctor closed the doors quickly and ran up the ramp towards the console. 'I don't understand that and I understand everything. This, this can't happen! There is no way a human being can lock itself onto the TARDIS and transport itself inside. It must be . . .'

He picked up an ophthalmoscope and used it to look into Donna's eyes. ' . . . Impossible. Some sort of subatomic connection? Something in the temporal field? Maybe something pulling you into alignment with the Chronon shell. Maybe something macro mining your DNA within the interior matrix. Maybe a genetic . . .'

SLAP!

'What was that for?' Why was it that since he'd met Rose, women just wanted to slap him?

'Get - me - to - the - church!' she demanded.

Well sod this for a game of tiddlywinks. 'Right! Fine! I don't want you here anyway! Where is this wedding?'

'Saint Mary's, Hayden Road, Chiswick, London, England, Earth, the Solar System,' she said sarcastically, and then noticed a purple ladies hoodie, left hanging over the handrail. She rushed over and grabbed it as evidence of the Doctor being a kidnapper.

'I knew it, acting all innocent. I'm not the first, am I? How many women have you abducted?' she asked as she held the hoodie up for him to see.

The Doctor looked at it, a sad expression on his face. Only a few hours ago, she'd been in here, wearing that very top. 'That's my friend's,' he said sadly.

'Where is she, then? Popped out for a space walk?' she said sarcastically, unaware of the unbearable sadness in his heart.

'She's gone.'

'Gone where?' she shouted.

He looked away, trying to stem the tears that were welling in his eyes. 'I lost her.'

'Well, you can hurry up and lose me!' she shouted, but he didn't react, didn't respond at all. It was then that she noticed his sadness, how had she missed it? It was like a howl of anguish emanating from his very soul. 'How do you mean, lost?'

He took Rose's top from her, as though it was sacrilege that anyone but him should hold that which belonged to his love.

'Right, Chiswick,' he called out, and ran to the console.

* * *

'There we go. Told you she'd be all right. She can survive anything,' the Doctor said as they stepped out of the TARDIS, across the road from her house.

'More than I've done,' she replied.

The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and scanned her from head to toe. 'No, all the Huon particles have gone. No damage, you're fine.'

'Yeah, but apart from that . . . I missed my wedding, lost my job and became a widow on the same day . . . sort of.'

'I couldn't save him,' the Doctor said in self accusation.

'He deserved it,' she said, nodding as if to confirm what she was saying. The Doctor looked at her as though he didn't believe her.

'No, he didn't,' she admitted sadly. 'I'd better get inside. They'll be worried.'

'Best Christmas present they could have,' he said looking through the front room window as her parents hugged. 'Oh, no, I forgot you hate Christmas.'

'Yes, I do,' she declared.

He reached inside the door of the TARDIS. 'Even . . . if it snows?'

He pulled a lever and the TARDIS lamp turned yellow, firing a bolt of energy into the sky, which caused an instant snow shower.

Donna started to laugh in disbelief. 'I can't believe you did that!'

'Oh, basic atmospheric excitation.' They stood there, looking at each other.

'Merry Christmas,' she said.

'And you.' He looked up at the falling snow. 'So . . . what will you do with yourself now?

'Not getting married, for starters . . . . And I'm not going to temp anymore . . . . I don't know . . . travel . . . see a bit more of planet Earth . . . walk in the dust . . . just go out there, and do something.'

'Well, you could always . . .' He left the sentence hanging in the air between them.

'What?'

'Come with me,' he said quietly.

'No,' she whispered, shaking her head.

'Okay,' he said a bit too quickly.

'I can't,' she sighed.

'No, that's fine.' Again, he was a bit too quick with the reply.

'No, but really, everything we did today . . . do you live your life like that?'

He remembered all the good times with Rose. 'Not all the time.'

'I think you do . . . and I couldn't.'

'But you've seen it out there . . . it's beautiful.'

'And it's terrible. That place was flooding and burning and they were dying, and you were stood there like, I don't know . . . a stranger . . . and then you made it snow, I mean, you scare me to death.'

What had he become, now that Rose wasn't here to hold his hand, was he that scary? 'Right,' he said, resigned to a life without a friend, a life without Rose.

'Tell you what I will do, though, Christmas dinner . . . Oh, come on.'

'I don't do that sort of thing.' Not anymore, not without Rose, it wouldn't be the same.

'You did it last year, you said so.' Damn, he'd been busted. 'And you might as well, because Mum always cooks enough for twenty.'

He hesitated, how was he going to get out of this one? 'Oh . . . all right then . . . but you go first . . . better warn them. And don't say I'm a Martian. I just have to . . . park her properly . . . she might drift off to the Middle Ages. I'll see you in a minute.'

Donna started to cross the road, and the Doctor snuck into the TARDIS and started the time rotor.

Donna turned at the sound, realising that he was trying to sneak away. 'DOCTOR! DOC-TOR!'

The TARDIS fell silent, and a moment later the door opened. 'Blimey, you can shout.'

She smiled at him. 'Am I ever going to see you again?'

'If I'm lucky.'

'Just . . . promise me one thing . . . . Find someone.'

'I don't need anyone,' he said arrogantly.

'Yes, you do. Because sometimes, I think you need someone to stop you.'

'Yeah.' She was right, and that someone was lost in another universe. 'Thanks then, Donna. Good luck. And just . . . be magnificent.'

'I think I will . . . yeah.' The Doctor went back into the TARDIS and closed the door. 'Doctor?' She called.

'Oh, what is it now?' Feigning annoyance, but smiling at her.

'That friend of yours . . . what was her name?' She realised that his missing friend was probably the one who used to stop him.

'Her name was Rose.' He went back inside, the noise started, the TARDIS started to fade, and then it shot up into the air and disappeared.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

'Der-der-der-der'

07:00, and a hand appeared from under the purple duvet and fumbled across the top of the bedside cabinet, silenced the alarm clock, and retreated back into the warm cocoon of the slumbering medical student. 'Urgh', it couldn't possibly be morning already, she'd only just put her text books down and gone to bed, finally able to recite all the digestive enzymes in the small intestine.

She reluctantly dragged herself out of the warm, welcoming bed and made her way to the tiny bathroom of her tiny flat. She turned on the tap for the shower, leaving the cold water to spray into the bathtub while she had a pee. By the time she'd finished emptying her bladder, the water coming out of the shower head was nice and hot.

She sat at the dressing table in her bedroom, wrapped in a pink bathrobe and a pink towel around her head in a turban, eating her muesli and doing her make up, trying to get ready in time to get to work. It was weird, but no matter how hard she tried, or how much she planned, she never seemed to have enough time. She would definitely make time tonight though, it was her little brother's twenty first birthday party, and there was no way she was going to be late for that.

She dressed in black trousers, and turquoise blouse, and put her hair back with a couple of hair grips. She was about to put her coat on, when she remembered the washing in the machine.

'Arrrgh . . . damn!' She quickly ran into the tiny kitchen and pulled the items out of the washing machine and quickly draped them over the clothes horse, before rushing out of the door to catch the bus for the short journey to the Royal Hope Hospital.

As she walked along Chancellor Street from the bus stop towards the hospital, her phone rang, and she saw that it was her elder sister Tish.

'You're up early. What's happening?'

'It's a nightmare, because Dad won't listen, and I'm telling you, Mum is going mental. Swear to God, Martha, this is epic. You've got to get in there and stop him,' Tish said.

'How do I do that?' she asked, knowing that she was talking about her dad bringing his girlfriend to Leo's party.

'Tell him he can't bring her.'

She was about to answer when her call waiting tone beeped. 'Hold on, that's Leo. I'll call you back.' Why was it that everyone called her if there was a problem? I mean, Tish was the eldest.

'Martha, if Mum and Dad start to kick off, tell them I don't even want a party. I didn't even ask for one. They can always give me the money instead,' Leo told her.

'Yeah, but why do I have to tell them? Why can't you?' Her call waiting tone beeped again. 'Hold on, that's Mum. I'll call you back.' Maybe it's because they thought she was the smartest of the siblings. She didn't think she was, even if she had gotten into medical school.

'I don't mind your father making a fool of himself in private, but this is Leo's twenty first, everyone is going to be there, and the entire family is going to look ridiculous,' Francine, her mother said.

'Mum, it's a party; I can't stop Dad from bringing his girlfriend.' Her call waiting tone beeped yet again. 'Hold on, that's Dad, I'll call you back.' For God's sake, what did they think she was, the family agony aunt?

'Martha? Now, tell your mother, Leo is my son, and I'm paying for half that party. I'm entitled to bring who I like,' her father, Clive said forcefully. Why he couldn't tell her himself, she'd never know. Oh, actually, she did . . . they weren't talking to each other.

'I know, but think what it's going to look like for Mum, if you're standing there with Annalise,' she said, trying to play the devil's advocate.

'What's wrong with Annalise?' he asked her defensively.

Actually, there was nothing wrong with Annalise, Martha quite liked her. She was a bit too young for her dad she thought, but she was a nice enough person, and she wasn't an emotional bully like her mum was.

She could hear her in the background. 'Is that Martha? Say hi . . . hi Martha, hi!'

'Hi, Annalise,' Martha called out.

'Big kiss, lots of love, see you at the party, babe. Now, take me shopping, big boy.'

Martha looked at her phone in amusement and turned it off, time to end that conversation. A tall, thin man with sticky up hair, wearing a brown pin striped suit and long brown coat stepped out in front of her.

'Like so,' he said, looking at her as though he knew her, and was making some kind of point as he removed his tie. 'See?'

The man left as suddenly as he had arrived, and Martha gave him a puzzled look. Obviously he must have been heading for the Mental Health Outpatients Department.

* * *

The Doctor was sitting in his favourite comfy chair in the library, reading the latest edition of Galactic News on his E-reader. He looked for stories which he had been involved in, in any of his incarnations. Rose used to love it when he found himself, and he had to explain which one of him it was, and who he was with. They passed many an evening like that . . .

He missed her. He missed her teasing smile, when she used to try and wind him up. He missed her laugh, he missed her look of admiration when he was being particularly clever, he missed the smell of her perfume, he missed the feel of her hand in his . . . he just missed her.

He wondered what was she doing now? Was she missing him? Of course she was, they were in love, but he hoped that she was moving on and making a life for herself in that new world. After all, she'd got her mum, she'd got a new dad, and he hoped that was working out alright after the dodgy start.

Pete Tyler was in denial that Rose could be his daughter, but she had said there were five of them now, when he had said goodbye to her on that beach, so it sounded as though they were a family. And of course there was Mickey . . . would they get back together again after she had gotten over him. That thought hurt him, but he also hoped that she didn't deny herself the chance of happiness with someone else.

"Enough of this maudlin", he thought to himself, he would never know how she was getting on, or how her life would turn out. She was Rose Tyler, and she would be fine, she'd proved that when she'd travelled with him. He stood up and headed for the console room to see what was occurring in the universe.

He activated the view screen and performed a quick scan for any unusual phenomena, when he noticed some plasma coils accumulating energy. Now that wasn't unusual in itself, except that it was on twenty first century Earth, and they didn't have that kind of technology, and it was around a hospital near the Thames.

Now this was the kind of thing that would distract him for a while, and help him to stop pining for Rose. It looked like something was interfering with the hospital, the questions were, who, and why? If he could get himself admitted to the hospital, he could work the investigation from the inside.

 **Royal** **Hope** **Hospital.**

 **Chancellor Street, London.**

The Doctor lowered Martha onto an upholstered bench seat in the reception area of the hospital; she was starting to come around. Everyone was suffering from the effects of mild hypoxia, but there would be no permanent damage, once again his respiratory bypass had come in useful.

He made his way to the main doors and noticed there was a police cordon, paramedics, reporters, and sightseers. He certainly didn't fancy hanging around and having to try and explain this to the authorities. He went to his right, and tried to find another way out, heading for the stores. He went past racks of supplies and boxes, until he found the loading bay, and managed to 'fade' into the street and back onto the Albert Embankment.

As he walked towards the TARDIS, he risked one look back at the hospital, and saw Martha looking at him. He smiled at her and touched a finger to his forehead in a salute to her, before turning away and entering the TARDIS.

"Well, that could have gone better", he thought to himself, as he put the TARDIS into the Vortex. As usual, things went down to the wire, he'd have to try and break that habit of leaving things until the last second. But on the whole, all things considered, it got him out of the TARDIS, and gave him something to do.

He watched the time rotor pump up and down as he usually did when he was thinking.

'Just promise me one thing . . . find someone', he saw Donna telling him.

'You just leave us behind. Is that what you're going to do to me?' Rose had asked him. He moved away from the rotor and sat on the jump seat.

'Because sometimes, I think you need someone to stop you' Donna had said.

'NO! I won't let you do this' Rose had said as she stood in front of his mortal enemy, a Dalek. 'It couldn't kill me, it's changing. What about you, Doctor? What the hell are you changing into?'

And then Donna had said it. 'That place was flooding and burning and they were dying, and you were stood there like, I don't know . . . a stranger . . . and then you made it snow, I mean, you scare me to death.'

'I'm sorry Rose, I'm turning back into the man you first met . . . I think Donna was right, I need someone to tell me when enough is enough.' He remembered when she was crying on that beach, when he told her that it was the same old life, travelling in the TARDIS.

'On your own?' She had asked him, horrified by the idea of him being on his own . . . even if it wasn't her by his side.

He stood up and walked back to the console, he'd come to a decision, he needed someone to be his moral compass, just as she had been. Donna wasn't interested, Martha Jones however, had shown a remarkable ability to deal with the impossible and bizarre, and was good in a crisis.

She'd said it was her Brother Leo's twenty first birthday party tonight; he did a quick check on the view screen and found out where the party was being held.

'Hah! The Market Tavern, right then Martha Jones, let's offer you one trip, and see if you've got the right stuff.'

He landed the TARDIS in an alley across the street from the Market Tavern, and went to stand at the corner, where he could watch the coming and going of the Jones family and their guests. He saw a leggy blonde storm out of the Tavern, followed by members of the Jones family. It was all a bit domestic.

The argument moved off, down the street, and Martha stood there, watching them go. She'd had enough of trying to be the sensible one, the peacemaker, the devil's advocate. Sod it; let them get on with it. She glanced across the street, and did a double take, was that the Doctor standing there, watching her? He turned and wandered off down the alley.

She hurried across the road and looked down the alley, he'd gone. She walked down the alley and turned the corner at the end, ah, there he was, leaning back against the blue box that she thought she'd seen outside the hospital.

'I went to the moon today,' she said with a smile.

'A bit more peaceful than down here,' he noted.

'You never even told me who you are,' she said as she walked towards him.

'The Doctor.'

'What sort of species? It's not every day I get to ask that.'

'I'm a Time Lord.'

'Riiiight! Not pompous at all, then,' she said sarcastically.

Ooh, she wasn't fazed or intimidated by him being a superior alien being then, that was a good start. There was a slight smirk on his face as he reached inside his jacket. 'I just thought . . . since you saved my life and I've got a brand new sonic screwdriver which needs road testing . . . you might fancy a trip.'

'What, into space?'

'Well . . .'

'But I can't. I've got exams. I've got things to do. I have to go into town first thing and pay the rent; I've got my family going mad.'

Ah, she'd got a life, just like Rose had when he first met her, and he now knew what to do about that. 'If it helps . . . I can travel in time as well.'

'Get out of here.'

'I can.'

'Come on now, that's going too far.'

'I'll prove it.'

He turned around and entered the TARDIS and after a few moments, it started to dematerialise, accompanied by the most wonderful sound she had ever heard. She walked forwards and held her hand out, trying to see if it had just become invisible, or if it had really disappeared. She stepped back suddenly as she heard the sound again, and felt the breeze from the air being twisted out of shape.

The TARDIS rematerialised where it had been standing, and the Doctor stepped out, holding his tie up for her to see. 'Told you.'

'No, but . . . that was this morning . . . . Did you . . . ? Oh, my God. You can travel in time. But hold on . . . if you could see me this morning, why didn't you tell me not to go in to work?' she asked him accusingly. She nearly died today, and he could have prevented that . . . couldn't he?

'Crossing into established events is strictly forbidden,' he told her, and then realised that he had done just that to impress her. 'Except for cheap tricks,' he added as a proviso.

'And that's your spaceship?' she said with a smile.

'It's called the TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimension in Space,' he explained, as she reached forwards and stroked the TARDIS.

'Your spaceship's made of wood,' she observed, not much of a spaceship if it's just made of wood. 'There's not much room . . . we'd be a bit intimate.'

He pushed the door open. 'Take a look.'

She stepped inside, and he followed her to see her reaction. She gazed up at the vaulted ceiling, the large, vaulted ceiling. 'No . . . no, no.' She turned and ran outside.

'But it's just a box . . . . But it's huge,' she shouted to him inside.

She popped her head through the door. 'How does it do that? It's wood.' She stepped back inside. 'It's like a box with that room just rammed in.' Then she said it, they all did. 'It's bigger on the inside.' The Doctor mouthed the words as she said them.

'Is it? I hadn't noticed.' That was it, she was in and she'd passed the test. He took off his long coat and threw it over a coral strut. 'Right then, let's get going.'

She followed him up the ramp, looking around the console room. 'But . . . is there a . . . crew, like a navigator and stuff? Where is everyone?'

'Just me,' he said with a slight hint of sadness in his voice.

'All on your own?'

'Well, sometimes I have guests . . . I mean some friends, travelling alongside. I had . . .' He thought about his lost love. 'There was recently . . . a friend of mine.' His voice went quiet, thoughtful. 'Rose, her name was. Rose.' He didn't want to talk about his relationship with Rose, so he decided on a non committal explanation. 'And we were together, anyway.'

"Were together? So that was it, he's just been dumped by his girlfriend" she thought to herself. 'Where is she now?' Martha asked.

'With her family, happy . . . She's fine. She's . . . not that you're replacing her,' he told her firmly, pointing a finger at her.

'Never said I was,' she smiled. So this Rose had left him and gone back to her family.

'Just one trip to say thanks. You get one trip, then back home,' he said rather angrily. 'I'd rather be on my own.' He thought about Rose again.

He was still in love with her; that was obvious. Maybe she could distract him; after all, he was quite attractive, in a geeky kind of way. And he was a damn good kisser. She sidled up to him. 'You're the one that kissed me,' she teased.

'That was a genetic transfer,' he said, a bit too "matter of fact".

She continued to tease him. 'And if you will wear a tight suit.'

'Now . . . don't!'

'And then travel all the way across the universe just to ask me on a date.'

'Stop it,' he said firmly, staring at her. He was still mourning the loss of Rose, and was in no mood to have emotions messed with.

'For the record? I'm not remotely interested. I only go for humans,' she lied.

'Good,' he said, relieved that she had gotten the message. 'Well, then. Close down the gravitic anomaliser, fire up the helmic regulator. And finally, the hand brake. Ready?'

'No.'

'Off we go,' he said as the TARDIS dematerialised with a big jolt, and they hung on for dear life.

'Blimey, it's a bit bumpy.'

'Welcome aboard, Miss Jones,' he shouted, holding his hand out across the console.

'It's my pleasure, Mister Smith,' she replied, shaking his hand.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

The TARDIS was still bucking, and Martha was hanging on to the console. 'But how do you travel in time? What makes it go?'

The Doctor was winding a handle, trying to stabilise the TARDIS. 'Oh, let's take the fun and mystery out of everything. Martha, you don't want to know. It just does. Hold on tight.'

The TARDIS came to a halt, and Martha was thrown to the floor.

'Blimey. Do you have to pass a test to fly this thing?'

'Yes, and I failed it. Now, make the most of it.' He grabbed his long, brown coat and headed for the doors. 'I promised you one trip and one trip only. Outside this door, brave new world,' he said, standing with his back to the door.

'Where are we?' she asked, standing at the top of the ramp.

'Take a look. After you.'

Martha stepped through the door onto a narrow street, where a woman was washing in a water trough, and hanging the washing on lines below the overhanging eaves, scruffy urchins ran past her.

'Oh, you are kidding me; you are so . . . kidding me. Oh, my God, we did it. We travelled in time.' She looked around, trying to take it all in. 'Where are we? No . . . sorry, I got to get used to this whole new language . . . When are we?'

Before he could answer, he looked up and jumped backwards, dragging her out of the way of a slop bucket being emptied. 'Mind out.'

'Gardez l'eau!'

'Somewhere before the invention of the toilet. Sorry about that.'

'I've seen worse. I've worked the late night shift A+E.' The Doctor started to walk down the street. 'But are we safe?' she called out to him, 'I mean, can we move around and stuff?'

'Of course we can. Why do you ask?'

'It's like in the films. You step on a butterfly; you change the future of the human race.'

'Tell you what then, don't step on any butterflies,' he said, and then thought about what she'd said. 'What have butterflies ever done to you?'

'What if . . . I don't know, what if I kill my grandfather?'

'Are you planning to?'

'No.'

'Well, then.'

'And this is London?'

'I think so. Round about . . . fifteen . . . ninety nine.'

'Oh, but hold on . . . am I alright? I'm not going to get carted off as a slave, am I?'

'Why would they do that?'

'Not exactly white, in case you haven't noticed.'

'I'm not even human. Just walk about like you own the place. Works for me. Besides, you'd be surprised. Elizabethan England, not so different from your time. Look over there. They've got recycling,' he said as he pointed to a man shovelling some animal dung into a wooden pail.

They continued down the street, and two men were leaning on an upturned barrel, chatting and drinking. 'Water cooler moment.'

'And the world will be consumed by flame,' a prophet of doom was preaching as they walked past.

'Global warming. Oh, yes, and entertainment. Popular entertainment for the masses. If I'm right, we're just down the river by Southwark, right next to . . .' They ran along from the south end of old London Bridge, past St Mary Ovarie, Southwark Cathedral, and stopped when they saw the magnificent edifice.

'Oh, yes,' he shouted. 'The Globe Theatre! Brand new, just opened . . . Though, strictly speaking, it's not a globe, it's a tetradecagon. Fourteen sides. Containing . . . the man himself.'

'Whoa, you don't mean . . . Is Shakespeare in there?'

'Oh, yes. Miss Jones, will you accompany me to the theatre?' He held out his arm for her to take.

She held on with both hands. 'Mister Smith, I will.'

'When you get home, you can tell everyone you've seen Shakespeare.'

'Then I could get sectioned.'

* * *

Martha and an amorous Will Shakespeare were sitting on an empty stage, chatting, while the Doctor went searching for any copies of 'Love's Labour's Won'.

'And I say, a heart for a hart and a dear for a deer,' he said, trying to impress her with a play on words.

'I don't get it.'

'Then give me a joke from Freedonia.'

'Okay, Shakespeare walks into a pub and the landlord says, Oi mate, you're Bard.'

Will laughed politely. 'That's brilliant. Doesn't make sense, mind you, but never mind that. Now come here.' He put his arm around her waist and pulled her towards him.

'I've only just met you.'

'The Doctor may never kiss you. Why not entertain a man who will?' he said, and hesitantly moved to kiss her.

She didn't resist, after all, there weren't many women she knew who could claim to have kissed Shakespeare. When he got close though, she realised that oral hygiene in 16th century was not up to the standards of the 21st century.

'I don't know how to tell you this, oh great genius . . . but your breath doesn't half stink.'

'Good props store back there,' the Doctor said as he wandered on to the stage, wearing a ruff, and carrying an animal skull. 'I'm not sure about this though . . . reminds me of a Sycorax.'

'Sycorax, nice word. I'll have that off you as well,' Will said.

'I should be on ten percent. How's your head?'

'Still aching.'

The Doctor took off the ruff. 'Here, I got you this.' He fitted it around Will's neck. 'Neck brace, wear that for a few days till its better . . . although you might want to keep it, it suits you.'

'What about the play?' Martha asked him.

'Gone, I looked all over; every single copy of Love's Labours Won went up in the sky.'

'My lost masterpiece,' Will said sadly.

'You could write it up again,' she suggested.

'Yeah, better not, Will . . . there's still power in those words. Maybe it should best stay forgotten,' the Doctor suggested.

'Oh, but I've got new ideas. Perhaps it's time I wrote about fathers and sons, in memory of my boy, my precious Hamnet.'

'Hamnet?' Martha asked.

'That's him.'

'Ham-Net?' she queried.

'What's wrong with that?' Will asked, looking her in the eye.

'Anyway, time we were off. I've got a nice attic in the Tardis where this lot can scream for all eternity,' he said as he picked up the blue, crystal ball. 'And I've got to take Martha back to Freedonia.'

'You mean travel on through time and space,' Will said, giving the Doctor a knowing look.

The Doctor's voice had a cautious edge to it. 'You what?'

'You're from another world like the Carrionites, and Martha is from the future . . . it's not hard to work out.'

'That's . . . incredible, you are incredible,' the Doctor said, full of admiration.

'We're alike in many ways, Doctor.' He turned to Martha and held her hand up. 'Martha, let me say goodbye to you in a new verse, a sonnet for my Dark Lady . . . Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate . . .' He was about to kiss her hand, when Burbage and Kempe came running in to the theatre.

'Will!' Burbage shouted excitedly.

'Will, you'll never believe it, she's here! She's turned up!' Kempe shouted.

'We're the talk of the town . . . she heard about last night, she wants us to perform it again,' Burbage said with pride.

'Who?' Martha asked.

'Her Majesty,' Burbage said. 'She's here.'

'Queen Elizabeth the First!' the Doctor said enthusiastically.

'Doctor?' the queen said as she strode into the theatre.

'What?' he said, a little less enthusiastic this time.

'My sworn enemy,' she declared.

'What?' he said, with no hint of his initial enthusiasm.

'Off, with his head!'

'What?' he said, enthusiasm having been replaced with disbelief.

Martha could see that things were about to "kick off". 'Never mind what, just run! See you, Will, and thanks.'

They ran through the back of the stage to find a way out.

'Stop that pernicious Doctor,' the queen commanded.

Will laughed as they ran past him, followed by a couple of the queen's guards. As they ran down the street, they could hear them shouting. 'Stop in the name of the Queen!'

'What have you done to upset her?' Martha asked.

'How should I know? Haven't even met her yet,' he said as he put the key in the lock and opened the door. 'That's time travel for you, still . . . can't wait to find out,' he said as Martha ran past him, into the TARDIS.

He looked down the street to see an archer taking aim. 'That's something to look forward to . . . Ooo!' He quickly ducked inside and shut the door, as an arrow thudded into it.

The Doctor ran up to the console, and started the time rotor, putting them into the Vortex.

'Happen to you a lot does it?' Martha asked with a smile, as she watched him orbit the console.

He looked up at her. 'What?'

'People you've never met wanting to kill you.'

He snorted a laugh. 'Not as often as you'd imagine . . . but at some point in my future, I must meet her and do something to upset her.'

If he only knew that in 1562, he would marry the young Elizabeth, and then travel on through time and space, never to see her again. Queen Elizabeth the First on the other hand, would see him again, today in fact, and she was very annoyed with him. Only a few days ago, the only woman he would have considered marrying was Rose Tyler, and now, that was never going to happen.

Martha understood how Elizabeth felt. Last night they had stayed at a boarding house, where Will Shakespeare was also staying. The Doctor had invited her into his bed, and she was ready to participate in some romantic activity, only to have him tell her how marvellous his "ex" was, and how she would have solved the mystery of the Carrionites.

The Doctor of course, was completely unaware of any feelings that Martha may have had for him. He only had eyes for one woman, and she was in another universe, and for him, out of sight did not mean out of mind.

'Fancy a cup of tea?' he asked her, once he'd stabilised the TARDIS in flight.

Martha looked around the console room. 'Yeah, but where's the kettle?'

The Doctor smiled at her. 'In the kitchen, of course. Come on, I'll show you,' he said, and led her through the console room to the corridor that led to the rest of the TARDIS.

She looked down the corridor, open mouthed. 'I only thought there was that one room, how big is the TARDIS?'

'Y'know, when it comes to transdimensional engineering, that is a very difficult question to answer.'

'Hmm, okay . . . and what are all these rooms?' she asked, putting her hand on a door handle to her left.

'Not that one,' he said sharply. 'Sorry . . . the kitchen's this way.' He guided her down the corridor to the kitchen on the right, glancing back longingly at the door to Rose's room, before following Martha into the kitchen.

'Tea or coffee?' he asked as he switched on the kettle and selected the mug with the glass Pyramid of San Kaloon on it, the one that Rose had bought for him when he was in his previous body.

'Tea, please,' she replied.

His fingers brushed past the 2012 Olympics mug that he'd bought for Rose only a couple of weeks ago, and settled on a plain, white mug. 'Milk and sugar?'

'White, one sugar thanks . . . So, Doctor . . . a Time Lord eh?' she said, trying to strike up a conversation with this very non communicative alien.

'Er, yeah, but you don't want to hear about me, what about you, how long have you been a doctor then?'

'Don't want to hear about you!' she said incredulously. 'How many aliens do you think I've met?'

He poured the water into the mugs. 'Well, I don't know, you didn't know I was an alien when I took my tie off in the street, did you? And Florence Finnegan in the hospital, perfectly normal person, until she had lunch.'

He sat at the table, and put her mug of tea in front of her, smiling at her with raised eyebrows. 'Okay, you've got a point, so how many aliens are there on Earth?'

'A few hundred at any one time, most of them are decent, hard working individuals, producing high tech consumer gadgets, or some very odd music for some reason,' he said, rubbing the back of his neck. 'Occasionally, you get the odd one or two who just don't like you, and want to destroy you.'

'What like those metal pepper pots and robots that recently tried to shoot everyone with lasers . . . ? What ever happened to them?'

The Doctor had a far away look in his eyes. 'We managed to stop them, sucked them into the Void,' he said sadly, remembering someone else who was nearly sucked in with them.

He suddenly switched his mood. 'So, you may have met all sorts of camouflaged aliens. Remember 10 Downing Street blowing up? That was aliens from a planet called Raxacoricofallapatorius, wearing dead people's skin, and taking over Parliament.'

'Oh, you're having me on, and they blew up Number Ten?'

'No, we blew up Number Ten to stop them.'

'You keep saying 'we'.'

'Me and Rose, we were a great team . . . Anyway, you . . . a doctor then.'

'Not yet, I'm a medical student, in my final year. I've got to pass my exams first, talking of which, you are going to put me back to where I was . . . sorry, there goes that new language again, when I was, aren't you?'

'Of course, drink up and I'll drop you off.'

After they had finished their tea, they walked back side by side down the corridor towards the console room. As they walked past the "forbidden" door, as Martha thought of it, she deliberately looked at it so that he would see her.

'Was that her room?' she asked, nodding at the door.

'Yes . . . yes it . . . was,' he said changing his answer to past tense.

'It must be hard, trying to go on without her,' she said, trying to break through his defensive walls.

He looked down at her without speaking, was she being nosey, or was she being a doctor, trying to care about someone who was in pain? 'Life goes on,' he said as a matter of fact.

They walked into the console room, and Martha sat up on the jump seat, while he went to the console and started to prepare the TARDIS for landing.

'Just one trip, that's what I said. One trip in the TARDIS, and then home,' he reminded her, and then he remembered a conversation he'd had with Rose, when she was standing on a beach, crying.

['What're you going to do?']

['Oh, I've got the TARDIS. Same old life, last of the Time Lords.']

['On your own?'] That question had been the most upsetting of all, because she was really worried that no one would be looking out for him, no one to watch his back. He looked up from the console, over to where Martha was sitting, her face a picture of resigned disappointment.

['Because sometimes I think you need someone to stop you,'] he heard Donna say in his memories. Maybe she was right, Rose always knew what to say and what to do to bring him back from the brink. Maybe to honour her memory, and for his own sake, he should see if Martha would take one more trip, just to see how she gets on.

'Although I suppose we could stretch the definition. Take one trip into past, one trip into future, how do you fancy that?'

'No complaints from me,' she said with a smile of anticipation.

He remembered Rose smiling like that. ['I'll never get used to this . . . Never. Different ground beneath my feet, different sky, it's beautiful. Oh, I love this. Can I just say . . . travelling with you . . . I love it.']

He knew exactly the right place to take Martha.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Having decided that he would give Martha one more trip, the Doctor knew exactly where he wanted to go, a place that Rose had loved when she first saw it.

'How about a different planet?' he asked her.

'Can we go to yours?'

He paused while he thought of the best way to say no. 'Ah, there's plenty of other places.'

'Come on, though. I mean, planet of the Time Lords. That's got to be worth a look. What's it like?' she asked with a smile.

'Well, it's beautiful, yeah,' he said with a far away look in his eyes.

'Is it like, you know, outer space cities, all spires and stuff?'

Oh, it was all that and more. 'I suppose it is,' he said quietly.

'Great big temples and cathedrals!'

'Yeah.' The thought of it was almost unbearable.

'Lots of planets in the sky?'

'The sky's a burnt orange, with the Citadel enclosed in a mighty glass dome, shining under the twin suns. Beyond that, the mountains go on forever. Slopes of deep red grass, capped with snow . . . .' He stopped talking, and stared off into the distance.

'Can we go there?' she whispered. He looked at her for a long, silent moment, his memories of home playing through his head.

'Nah. Where's the fun for me?' he said suddenly. 'I don't want to go home. Instead, this is much better. Year five billion and fifty-three, planet New Earth. Second hope of mankind.'

He grabbed his long coat off the coral and put it on. 'Fifty thousand light years from your old world, and we're slap bang in the middle of New New York.' He started running down the ramp. 'Although, technically it's the fifteenth New York from the original, so it's New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York. One of the most dazzling cities ever built.'

Martha caught up with him, and she stepped outside, into a narrow alleyway, that was pouring with rain.

'Oh, that's nice. Time Lord version of dazzling,' she said, as she zipped up her maroon leather jacket.

'Nah, bit of rain never hurt anyone. Come on, let's get under cover!' He ran down the alley, with Martha close on his heels, until they came upon an open area filled with plywood huts that made it look like a shanty town.

'Well, it looks like the same old Earth to me, on a Wednesday afternoon,' she complained. To be honest, she felt she'd seen better in the backstreets of London.

'Hold on, hold on. Let's have a look.' He used his sonic screwdriver to get a monitor working, and a pleasant blonde lady appeared, giving a traffic report.

'And the driving should be clear and easy, with fifteen extra lanes open for the New New Jersey expressway.' A view of a high-tech Manhattan was shown, with flying cars, the view he remembered Rose had loved.

'Oh, that's more like it. That's the view we had last time. This must be the lower levels, down in the base of the tower. Some sort of under-city.'

'You've brought me to the slums?' she said, looking at the futuristic city on the screen.

'Much more interesting. It's all cocktails and glitter up there.' He pointed at the screen. 'This is the real city.'

'You'd enjoy anything.'

'That's me. Ah, the rain's stopping, better and better.'

Hang on, he'd said "that's the view WE had last time". 'When you say last time, was that . . . you, and Rose?'

'Er . . . yeah . . . Yeah, it was . . . yeah.'

'You're taking me to the same planets that you took her?'

'What's wrong with that?'

'Nothing . . . just ever heard the word rebound?'

* * *

'All closed down,' the Doctor said as they walked into the pharmacy shanty town.

'Happy?' Martha asked him.

'Happy happy,' he said, looking into an empty shack. 'New New York can start again. And they've got Novice Hame. Just what every city needs. Cats in charge. Come on, time we were off.' He started wandering towards the alleyway.

'But what did he mean . . . the Face of Boe . . . you're not alone?'

'I don't know.'

'You've got me . . . is that what he meant?' she asked, smiling hopefully.

'I don't think so . . . sorry,' he said kindly, as her expression changed to one of disappointment.

'Then what?'

'Doesn't matter. Back to the TARDIS, off we go,' he said glibly, continuing his wander towards the alleyway with his hands in his pockets.

"Sod this", Martha thought to herself. She'd had a stomach full of his mysterious, moody, attitude. It was time to cut the crap and tell it like it is. She found an overturned chair, put it straight, and sat down; crossing her arms and legs in defiance.

At the sound of the chair being sat on, he casually turned to look at her, and was surprised at what he saw. 'Alright, are you staying?' he said sharply.

Okay, he was still in love with his ex, that was obvious. He wasn't looking for anyone on the rebound; he'd made that obvious as well, to the point of being rude. But he didn't have to be an obnoxious git; he could at least try and be friendly.

'Until you talk to me properly, yes,' she said angrily. 'He said last of your kind, what does that mean?'

'It really doesn't matter,' he told her in an annoyed tone of voice.

'You don't talk, you never say, why not?' She was shouting at him now, it was almost domestic.

He was considering his reply, when the air was filled with voices, singing a hymn. ['Fast falls the eventide.']

They both looked up to the sky. 'It's the city,' she said.

['The darkness deepens,'] the voices sang.

'They're singing.'

['Lord, with me abide. When other helpers fail.']

They looked at each other as the singing filled their souls,

'I lied to you, because I liked it,' he said quietly. 'I could pretend . . . just for a bit . . . I could imagine they were still alive . . . underneath a burnt orange sky.' Martha looked at him, silently listening as he started to open up to her. 'I'm not just a Time Lord . . . I'm the last of the Time Lords. The Face of Boe was wrong . . . there's no one else.'

'What happened?'

['Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day,'] the voices continued.

He swallowed hard, reached over to another toppled chair, and placed it in front of Martha. 'There was a war,' he started, hesitantly at first. 'A Time War. The last Great Time War. My people fought a race called the Daleks, for the sake of all creation. And they lost,' he said sadly. 'They lost . . . everyone lost.' He stared off into the distance as he remembered the end of days on Gallifrey.

'They're all gone now . . . My family . . . my friends, even that sky.' He tried to remember happier times. 'Oh, you should have seen it, that old planet.' She could see in his eyes that he was looking out at his lost home world.

'The second sun would rise in the south, and the mountains would shine.' There was a slight quiver in his voice as he tried to keep it together. 'The leaves on the trees were silver . . . and when they caught the light every morning . . . it looked like a forest on fire. When the autumn came . . . the breeze would blow through the branches like a song . . .'

['The darkness deepens. Lord, with me abide.']

'The capital Citadel had an upper city of towers and spires, which spanned the lower on vast arches. These were crowned by further arches and bridges, all of them carrying buildings and gardens, domes and belfries.'

'It sounds beautiful,' Martha breathed.

He smiled and nodded. 'Oh it was magnificent. My family home was situated on the slopes of Lung Mountain in the Cadon range. The red lawns, led to the orchard of Magenta Fruits, where Trunkikes nested in the branches, and Silverband Flutterwings would pollinate the blooms.'

Martha now had tears stinging her eyes, understanding why he'd been so reluctant to reminisce about his home, but he'd opened the door on his memories, and they came pouring out.

'In summer, we'd go down the valley to the Cadonflood River, where we'd watch the jousting Neversuch beetles on the bank, the clacking of their antlers filling the warm air, and we'd fish for Yaddlefish in the crystal clear water.'

'I'm sorry,' Martha said quietly, standing up and wiping the tears from her cheeks with her hands. She felt as though she'd trespassed onto the sacred ground of his private, painful memories. 'I think I'm ready to go now.'

He stood up, and they slowly walked back to the TARDIS, where he opened the door for her to walk inside. 'So, I'd better get you home then, so that you can carry on learning to be a doctor.'

'Yeah, I suppose you had,' she said disappointedly.

He passed Martha on the ramp, and went up to the console, where he started setting the coordinates. Martha slowly followed him, having one last look around this remarkable ship. The time rotor started pumping up and down, as it made its way into the Vortex. There was a sudden rotation, and a slight shift to the left, which made them grab for something to hold onto.

Martha looked at him in concern, but he just grinned at her. 'Turbulence,' he said casually, and then went to the monitor to check on the "turbulence". The TARDIS had done it to him again, and he started the landing sequence.

He gave a sheepish, apologetic smile to Martha. 'Bit of a technical hitch,' he said as they felt the TARDIS land. 'Bit of a detour.' He stopped the time rotor, and shut down the console.

'Technical hitch . . . ? Detour . . . ?' Martha rolled her eyes at him. 'What's that, a euphemism for lost?'

'Oi, I'll have you know, I'm not lost,' he said as he walked down the ramp. 'I'm just not where I wanted us to be.' He opened the door, and held it for her to step out.

'Where are we?' she asked him with a smile, looking out over a bay, with skyscrapers in the distance.

The Doctor stepped out after her, and took a few steps forward. 'Hah, smell that Atlantic breeze . . . nice and cold, lovely.' He turned to face her and then looked up. 'Martha, have you met my friend?'

She turned around and looked up also. 'Is that . . . ? Oh my God! That's the Statue of Liberty!'

'Gateway to the New World,' he said. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to break free . . .'

'That's so brilliant. I've always wanted to go to New York. I mean the real New York, not the new, new, new, new, new . . .'

'Well,' he said turning back to look over the Hudson River towards Manhattan. 'There's the genuine article. So good, they named it twice. Mind you, it was New Amsterdam originally, harder to say twice. No wonder it didn't catch on. New Amsterdam, New Amsterdam.'

'I wonder what year it is 'cos look, the Empire State

Building's not even finished yet.'

'Work in progress. Still got a couple floors to go, and if I know my history, that makes the date somewhere around . . .'

Martha picked up a discarded newspaper while he was talking. **'** November 1, 1930,' she said.

'You're getting good at this.' Wow, after only a couple of trips, she'd managed to get a handle on which time period she was in. He turned around, and realised that she'd been cheating.

'Eighty years ago,' she said, as the Doctor took the newspaper and started to read the lead story. 'It's funny 'cos you see all those old newsreels in black and white like it's so far away, but here we are . . . it's real, it's now,' she said, laughing at the sheer wonder of it. 'Come on, you. Where do we go first?'

She looked at him, and realised that he was frowning at the story. 'I think our detour just got longer,' he said, as he showed her the headline.

'Hooverville Mystery Deepens,' she read. 'What's Hooverville?'

'I think I'd better show you. Come on; let's get the ferry over to Manhattan Island.'

They wandered down onto the jetty that led to the 'Old Ferry Dock', and boarded the Battery Park - Liberty Island paddle steamer ferry. As they made their way across the Hudson, Martha looked on in wonder at the steam ships powering their way through the water, along with Clippers and Schooners in full sail, making their way in from the Atlantic and heading for the Ellis Island Immigration Station.

The ferry docked at Battery Park, and they caught a bus which took them the four miles to Central Park. At the Museum of Art, on Fifth Avenue, they hopped off the bus and strolled through the park towards the shanty town on the Central Lawn.

'Herbert Hoover, Thirty First President of the USA, came to power a year ago. Up till then New York was a boom town, the Roaring Twenties, and then . . .'

'The Wall Street Crash, yeah? When was that, 1929?'

The Doctor was impressed with her knowledge of history. 'Yeah. Whole economy wiped out overnight. Thousands of people unemployed. Suddenly the huddled masses doubled in number with nowhere to go. So they ended up here in Central Park.'

'What? They actually live in the park? In the middle of the city?' The Doctor didn't answer; he just gave her a look that said "you'd better believe it"b.

'Ordinary people . . . lost their jobs,' he told her as they walked through the cobbled together shacks. 'Couldn't pay the rent and they lost everything.' It reminded Martha of the Pharmacy shanty town that they'd visited in New New York, only a few hours earlier and five billion years in the future. 'There are places like this all over America . . . You only come to Hooverville when there's nowhere else to go.'


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

The rag-tag group of misfits were standing around a bench in Central Park. The young man from Tennessee named Frank, who had become the spokesman for the inhabitants of Hooverville, since Solomon had been killed by the Daleks, had returned from the shanty town.

'Well I talked to 'em and I told 'em what Solomon would've said and I reckon I shamed one or two of 'em,' he told Laszlo and Tallulah.

'What did they say?' the Doctor asked.

'They said yes,' Frank said with a smile. Tallulah hugged Laszlo around his neck.

'They'll give you a home, Laszlo . . . I mean, uh . . . don't imagine people ain't gonna stare. I can't promise you'll be at peace but, in the end, that is what Hooverville is for . . . people who ain't got nowhere else.'

'Thank you. I . . . I can't thank you enough,' the genetically altered pig-human Laszlo said.

'Well Martha, I reckon that we need to get moving if we're going to catch the ferry over to Liberty Island,' the Doctor said.

He turned to Laszlo, Tallulah and Frank. 'Good luck, and don't be too despondent, this depression doesn't last forever . . . in a few years time, I think America will recover, and over the next few decades will become a force to be reckoned with.' They all shook hands and hugged, and the Doctor and Martha walked out of Central Park, to catch a bus to Battery Park.

On Liberty Island, they walked up from the jetty. 'Do you reckon it's gonna work, those two?' Martha asked.

The Doctor turned and looked out over the bay. 'I don't know, anywhere else in the universe, I might worry about them, but New York, that's what this city's good at . . . Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, and maybe the odd pig-slave-Dalek-mutant-hybrid too.'

Martha laughed at that last bit. 'The pig and the showgirl.'

He smiled at that himself. 'The pig and the showgirl.'

'Just proves it, I suppose,' she stated. 'There's someone for everyone.'

The Doctor's smile disappeared, as he thought about the someone who was for him. He hadn't had chance to think about her while he was battling the Daleks, but now, at this moment when it was all over and he was victorious once more, she wasn't there to smile that special smile, to hold his hand, to give him that victory hug.

'Maybe,' he said sadly, as he turned away and headed for the TARDIS. Martha watched him go; realising that she'd said the wrong thing again, stirred up his memories and his emotions.

She caught up with him and sighed. 'Meant to say . . . sorry.'

'What for?' he asked, it wasn't her fault that he couldn't stop thinking about Rose.

'Just 'cos that Dalek got away. I know what that means to you. Think you'll ever see it again?'

Ah, so it wasn't about Rose, she was empathising with him, over his continuing battle with the Daleks. He unlocked the TARDIS door and thought about her question. While there was just one Dalek alive in the universe, then all life was in danger.

'Oh yes,' he said, that one Dalek would find a way of cloning itself and producing an army.

He held the door open, and she walked past him. He paused in the doorway and gazed out into the distance.

'One day,' he said quietly, before going inside and closing the door.

He walked up the ramp, and started the time rotor, before looking up at her and smiling. 'Are you hungry?' he asked her casually.

'Starving,' she replied with a smile.

'Right then, what about if I prepare lunch?'

'Lunch? You're going to make me lunch?'

'Make us lunch . . . and it's not a date or anything, it's just a meal, y'know, between breakfast and dinner,' he said with a smile and a waggle of his eyebrows.

'Okay, you've got yourself a deal.' She hung onto his arm, and they went through to the kitchen. 'What are you going to prepare?'

'I thought something from another world, a San Kaloon salad. A baked tuber, a cross between a jacket potato and an aubergine, with a spicy, mixed bean filling, sitting on a bed of sweet and savoury leaves.' He remembered when he had taken Rose and Jack to see the Glass Pyramid of San Kaloon, and they'd had lunch in a restaurant overlooking the pyramid plain. It seemed that everything he did reminded him of Rose, and he wondered how long that would go on for.

In the dining area of the kitchen, he pulled out a chair for her to sit down and did the gentlemanly thing of moving her chair to the table as she sat. He then took two glasses out of the cupboard and poured a glass of sparkling, white wine. He then set about preparing the meal, as Martha watched him, admiring his skill in the kitchen. She casually wondered if he would have cooked for Rose like this, "of course he would" she thought.

When the meal was ready, he brought over the plates of food, and put them on the table. 'Bon appétit,' he said with a smile, and they started to eat.

Martha took one mouthful and stopped, her eyes wide.

'Is it alright?' He asked as she stopped eating. 'I can do something else if you don't like it.'

'Don't like it? This is absolutely gorgeous.' She started to devour the food with enthusiasm. The Doctor continued eating, with a large, satisfied smile on his face, he'd still got it.

'Tell me Doctor, do all your trips end up with you nearly being killed?' she asked with a cheeky smile.

'No, most of them are just sight seeing, and having fun, although these last two trips and the detour, haven't turned out quite as I'd planned . . . sorry about that.'

'Don't be, because in a weird sort of way, I've enjoyed it,' she said with a lopsided smile.

'Really?' he asked in surprise, he'd underestimated her.

'Yeah, I mean, it's not every day I get to meet Shakespeare and find out that he's not the serious, sombre character I thought he'd be.'

The Doctor laughed at the memory. 'He was quite the lady's man, wasn't he?'

'And the witches, don't forget the witches,' she said as she put another forkful in her mouth. 'Okay, I know they were really aliens, but they sure looked like witches. And, I got to meet the oldest being in the universe before he died, and I helped stop the Daleks from overthrowing the Earth.'

'You certainly have a way of looking on the bright side, don't you?'

'Well, no use being maudlin about everything is there? I think you need a positive attitude when you're training to be a doctor.'

'Talking of which, what made you want to become a doctor?'

'I think it was when I was a kid, Leo pushed me off a swing once, and I broke my arm. He didn't mean to hurt me, he was just messing about, and he felt really guilty. But travelling in the ambulance, and having my arm put in plaster, it was fascinating, and I think I was bitten by the medical bug.'

'Ah, Leo, twenty first birthday, what was all that about outside the tavern? It was a bit 'domestic'.'

'Yeah, I suppose it was hard not to notice. Mum and Dad split up a while ago, and Dad's got himself a new girlfriend, and as you'd expect, they don't quite see eye to eye.'

'More like fist to eye from what I saw,' he said with a cheeky grin.

Martha laughed, and he noticed for the first time, that she had a really nice, bubbly laugh. 'It was nearly a cat fight in the middle of the street, how embarrassing would that have been? Somehow, over the years, I've seemed to have ended up as the peacekeeper in the family, even though Tish is the eldest.'

'Trust me, emotional maturity has nothing to do with your age.' He took her empty plate and put it on his, as he stood up and put them in the sink. He came back with two bowls of an alien fruit salad.

'Ooh, that's tangy and spicy, it's making my tongue tingle, I love it.'

'Great, isn't it, it's one of . . . Rose's . . . favourites,' he said, without even realising the effect that statement would have on Martha, and his face took on that sad expression that was becoming all too familiar.

Martha saw that melancholy look come over his face again, it happened every time he mentioned her. He must have had it really bad for this woman, and she started to wonder what she was like. Having seen the kind of life he leads, she must have been brave . . . and tough. Did it all get too much for her? Or was it that she met someone else on their travels, and dumped him?

'She had good taste . . . in desserts . . . and in men,' Martha said.

"Yes, she did", the Doctor thought to himself, unaware or just ignoring the intended flirt in her last comment. He had fallen in love with Rose, knowing that eventually the time would come when she would wither and die, and he would live on, but this . . . this was unbearable, she was alive, vibrant and in her prime, and yet she may as well have been dead, because she was lost to him, and he yearned to hold her in his arms again.

They finished their desserts in comparative silence, the Doctor deep in his own thoughts and memories, and Martha in her frustration at this attractive and yet seemingly unavailable man she was sharing lunch with. He'd come to a decision, and although Donna said that he needed someone to stop him, and Rose had been mortified at the thought of him travelling alone, he wasn't ready for company just yet, not when everything he did, or everything he said reminded him of what he'd lost.

He contemplated the woman sitting at the table opposite; she had all the makings of a good travelling companion. She wasn't fazed by the TARDIS being bigger on the inside, just like Rose; she was clever, like Rose; she was brave, like Rose; she was resourceful, like Rose. There was just one problem, she wasn't Rose, and that hurt, because this woman opposite was attracted to him and wanted to get emotionally involved, and he just couldn't do that.

If only Donna had agreed to come with him, she had no romantic interest in him whatsoever, and right now, he needed someone he could talk to about Rose. Martha seemed to be jealous of a woman she'd never met and would never have the opportunity to meet, and he couldn't handle her obvious interest in him.

So on the whole, it was probably for the best if he took her home and dropped her off.

'Come on then,' he said as he cleared the table and put the crockery and cutlery in the dishwasher. 'Let's go back to the console room.'

At the console, he started the time rotor and set the coordinates; the TARDIS 'took off', and started twisting its way through the Vortex. Martha held on as the room swayed gently around. The Doctor moved around her, operating various controls as he went, the space-time throttle, the time forwards/backwards controls and the harmonic generator, until finally, he activated the materialise/dematerialise function, and landed the TARDIS.

'There we go . . . perfect landing,' he declared, looking up at the now stationary time rotor. 'Which isn't easy in such a tight spot,' he concluded, scratching the back of his head.

'You should be used to tight spots by now,' she said with a hint of sarcasm. She looked at the doors, and back to the Doctor. 'Where are we?' She asked with an expectant smile.

'The end of the line.' There was finality to that statement, which was echoed in his quiet tone of voice.

Martha ran down the ramp to the doors and stopped, looking back to him for reassurance. She's picked up on his tone of voice, and her subconscious was trying to nudge the elbow of her awareness.

'No place like it,' he said, and Martha gave a questioning nod to ask if she should open the door. He nodded back, and she opened the door, stepping out into . . . her flat.

'Home . . . You took me home?'

'In fact, the morning after we left, so you've only been gone about twelve hours, no time at all, really.' He started looking around the flat, inspecting some photographs on the shelf.

'But all the stuff we've done, Shakespeare, New New York, old New York?'

'Yep, all in one night . . . relatively speaking.' That was good for him, last time he tried that, he'd gotten a slap from Jackie Tyler for being twelve months late. 'Everything should be just as it was . . . books, CDs, laundry.' He hooked a pair of knickers off the clothes horse with his finger and held them up.

Martha snatched the offending lingerie from his fingertips and stuffed it in her pocket.

'So, back where you were, as promised.'

'This is it?' She asked, knowing the answer. He had only promised one trip, as a thank you for helping him trap the Plasmavore in the Royal Hope Hospital.

He took a deep breath in. 'Yeah, I should probably . . . um . . .'

Martha's phone rang and the answering machine picked up 'Hi! I'm out! Leave a message!'

'I'm sorry,' she said apologetically, as they stood there looking at each other and listening to the call.

'Martha, are you there? Pick it up, will you?' her mother's voice said out of the phone.

'It's Mum. It'll wait.'

'All right then, pretend that you're out if you like.' They both had a little giggle at being found out. 'I was only calling to say that your sister's on TV. On the news of all things. Just thought you might be interested.'

Martha picked up the remote control and turned on the TV. They heard the voice of Professor Lazarus, and then saw an elderly gentleman giving a press conference; her sister, Tish was standing next to him.

'The details are top secret,' he was saying.

'How could Tish end up on the news?' Martha asked herself out loud.

'Tonight, I will demonstrate a device . . .' Lazarus continued.

'She's got a new job. PR for some research lab,' she told the Doctor.

'Hmm,' he said as he looked at her and then back to the TV.

' . . . with the push of a single button . . . I will change what it means . . . to be human,' Lazarus concluded.

Martha switched off the TV and turned to look at the Doctor. 'Sorry. You were saying we should . . . ?'

The Doctor wasn't paying attention to her, he was staring at the TV, trying to take in what he had just seen and heard. He suddenly realised that Martha was talking to him. 'Yes, yes, we should . . . One trip is what we said.'

'Okay . . . I suppose things just kind of . . . escalated,' she said with a smile, resigned to the fact that it was over, and he was moving on.

'Mmm . . . Seems to happen to me a lot,' he said quietly, with a frown.

'Thank you . . . for everything,' she said sincerely, with a sad smile.

'It was my pleasure.' He gave her a warm smile, and opened the TARDIS door, stepping inside. Martha gasped a breath and blinked back the tears that were stinging her eyes. This incredible, gorgeous man had breezed into her life, turned it upside down and inside out, and now was leaving, probably never to be seen again, unless he stepped in front of her on some street in the future, and took his tie off again.

She heard the engine start up and backed away as the TARDIS started to dematerialise, sending a gentle breeze through the room. "Now what?" she thought to herself as she turned her back on the space where the TARDIS had been. What did she do now, go back to her studies, and become a doctor? That would be hard, after the distraction of the last few days. I mean, come on, she'd been to the moon, met aliens, met Shakespeare, and saved the Earth, it would be hard to top all that by just living a normal life.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

'Thank you . . . for everything,' Martha said sincerely, with a sad smile as they stood outside the TARDIS.

'It was my pleasure,' the Doctor said with a warm smile in return. He opened the TARDIS door, and stepped inside, walking up the ramp to the console, powering up the atom accelerator, and releasing the time rotor handbrake to start it pumping up and down. So, here he was again, alone with his thoughts, with his memories, and the words of Professor Lazarus echoing in his mind.

'I will change what it means to be human?' he said out loud. He looked urgently at the console and flicked the switch on the harmonic generator, and slammed home the materialise/dematerialise lever.

Martha was still standing with her back to the window, where the TARDIS had been, seconds before. She was reflecting sadly, on the most incredible man that she had ever met, and couldn't stop thinking about. He'd kissed her in the hospital, and it was . . . wonderful, she'd felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and that had never happened before, on the rare occasion when she kissed a boyfriend.

At first, she thought it was wishful thinking, when she heard that magical sound. But no, she felt the breeze, and turned to see it materialise once more in her flat.

The door opened, and the Doctor stuck his head out. 'No, I'm sorry; did he say he was going to change what it means to be human?'

'I think so, yeah . . . why, is it important?'

He gave her that look, the one like she had just dribbled down her purple blouse. 'Well, unless he means eating too much, drinking too much, making stupid mistakes, and having a predisposition for self annihilation, then yes, it's very important.'

He stepped back into the room and switched the TV back on, but the story had moved on. It was the 24 hour news channel, and the story would come around again in about half an hour. 'Right, first things first Martha, put the kettle on, I think we need a cuppa,' he said, sitting on the sofa. 'Secondly, you need to phone your sister and get an invite to this shindig this evening.'

'Oi mister,' she said in pretend annoyance. 'You've dumped me, remember? I don't travel with you anymore, or had you forgotten?'

He looked up at her and gave her one of his boyish grins. 'Wellll, if you don't want to come with me . . .' he reached inside his jacket and pulled out the wallet with the psychic paper. ' . . . .I can always gatecrash,' he said, waving it at her.

She rolled her eyes and laughed. 'I'll put the kettle on.' She was only too happy to make a cup of tea; it meant that he would be staying for at least a little bit longer. And actually, if they went to this Professor Lazarus presentation, it would give her a chance to walk in on the Doctor's arm, and hopefully he would see what a great couple they would make together.

They sat there, drinking tea, as the story cycled around again, and they got the full story. Richard Lazarus had been working for decades on a gene manipulator that he hoped would slow down, prevent, and even reverse cellular ageing. The Lazarus Laboratories in Southwark would hold a black tie event this evening, where Professor Lazarus would demonstrate the culmination of his life's work.

'Right then, I need to get dressed,' he said as he sprang up off the sofa and headed for the TARDIS door. 'I'll see you in your glad rags in a few minutes.'

'You'll do no such thing,' she said indignantly. 'You'll see me in my evening gown in about an hour,' and went through to the bathroom to have a long soak, and only then would she get dressed and put her face on.

In the TARDIS wardrobe, (which Rose always called a clothing department), he found his dinner suit still on the hanger from the last time he had worn it. He had a flashback, as he saw Rose in her maids outfit, serving drinks and Hors d'oeuvres to guests at Jackie Tyler's fortieth birthday party in the alternate universe.

Was she still living at the mansion with her parents, he wondered, or had she moved into her own place? Money for a nice place, in a posh area of London wouldn't be a problem, as her "new" father was loaded. He hoped she was having a good life, and that now and again she would give a thought to an old friend from the old world.

He put the dinner suit on, all except the bow tie, and looked at himself in the full length mirror, giving a lopsided smile at his black converse on his feet. You never knew when you might need to run, and tonight promised to be one of those occasions. He went back through the console room, and into Martha's flat. She wouldn't be ready for ages yet, so he went to find the kettle in the kitchen and make another cup of tea.

He was sitting on the sofa, watching the news, when Martha emerged from her bedroom in a flowing, deep purple, evening gown. Her hair was swept back with a black headband, and she looked a million dollars. The Doctor stood politely and stared at her, really seeing her for the first time. She wasn't a medical student, or a passenger, she was a beautiful woman.

'You scrub up well,' she said with a smile.

'Eh? Er, yeah . . . and you,' he said absently. 'Er, I don't mean scrub up . . . I mean you look . . .' he wanted to say beautiful, because she was, but he felt that she might take that the wrong way, and to him, at the moment, only Rose could be called beautiful. 'You look very nice.'

'Nice?' she said, oh well, I suppose that would have to do for now. 'Thank you.'

She noticed that he'd got his bow tie in his hand. 'Would you like me to do that?'

'Er, no, I can do it myself really; I just wanted to leave it until the last minute. Y'know, makes me feel all restricted around my neck.'

'Come here,' she said in a motherly tone. She took the bow tie off him and started to feed it around his collar, and tie it. She smiled, as he behaved like a young child being forced to wear their Sunday best. 'There you are, all done.'

'Beep, beep'.

They heard a car horn outside. 'Ah, that'll be the taxi; I called them while I was getting ready.'

'Well then Miss Jones, would you do me the honour of letting me accompany you to an evening of revelations?' He held out his arm and waggled his eyebrows.

'Well Doctor, how could a lady possibly refuse?'

* * *

After a very eventful evening of scientific revelations, Martha and the Doctor were sitting in a taxi, heading back to her flat. She was reflecting on how they had seemed to have gotten a little closer this evening, and there hadn't been any awkward silences where he would think about his ex.

The Doctor, on the other hand, was reflecting on how he never had trouble with the mothers of his companions in the past, and started a role call of past, female assistants. He could discount Susan, because she was family, her mother, his daughter had died when she was young, and he doubted his own daughter would have slapped his face anyway.

There had been Barbara, Vicki, Katarina, Sarah, Dodo, Polly, Vicky, Zoe, Liz, Jo, Sarah Jane, Leela, Romana, Nyssa, Tegan, Sharon, Peri, Mel, Ace, Benny, Roz, Olla, Grace, Stacey, Izzy, Fey, Destrii, Samantha, Compassion, Anji, Lucie, and Ali . . .

He stopped, stunned by the number of people he had travelled with over the years, and they were only the females, and not once did he have a domestic altercation with their mothers. So it was Jackie Tyler who had started the current trend of giving him a slap, and Martha's mother, Francine, seemed keen to continue the trend and turn it into a tradition.

The Doctor had a great deal of respect for Clive Jones, having met his ex wife. At first, he wondered if it was Francine who had proposed to Clive, but then realised that she had probably told him that they were getting married, and the man deserved a medal for staying with her long enough to produce three children.

He thought about Jackie Tyler; she was scary, but it was because she was fiercely protective of her daughter. Francine on the other hand, was just plain scary. It never occurred to him that Francine may have become bitter and twisted because Clive had strayed from the fold, so to speak.

The taxi pulled up outside Martha's flat, and they climbed out, paid the driver and entered the flat. They squeezed past the TARDIS and stood in front of the doors.

He put the key in the lock and opened the door. 'Something else that just kind of escalated, then.'

'I can see a pattern developing . . . you should take more care in the future, and the past, and whatever other time period you find yourself in,' she said with a laugh.

'its good fun, though, isn't it?' he laughed.

'Yeah.'

'So, what d'you say . . . one more trip?'

There was a long pause while she thought about his offer. 'No . . . sorry.'

'What do you mean? I thought you liked it,' he said in surprise.

'I do, but I can't go on like this. "One more trip." It's not fair,' she told him; she'd had enough of playing second fiddle to the ghost of his ex girlfriend.

'What're you talking about?' He was genuinely baffled by her refusal.

'I don't want to be just a passenger anymore. Someone you take along for a treat. If that's how you still see me, well, I'd rather stay here.'

Ah, so that was it, she wanted to sign up for the long haul; he had another flashback.

['What're you going to do?']

['Oh, I've got the TARDIS. Same old life, last of the Time Lords.']

['On your own?']

'Okay, then . . . if that's what you want,' he said, as long as she realised that he was a one woman man, and that woman was Rose, then fine, she'd be a brilliant travelling companion.

Martha gave him the slightest 'head wobble' of attitude. 'Right.' After all that they'd been through, and everything she'd done for him, even saving his life! 'Well we've already said good-bye once today so it's really best if you just go,' she said angrily, as she turned her back on him and walked away.

She didn't hear him say goodbye, she didn't hear the door close, or the engine start up, it was as if he hadn't moved at all. She turned around and saw him standing there with his hands in his pockets, as though he was waiting for something.

'What is it?' she asked quietly.

'What . . . ? I said okay,' he said. What was the matter, hadn't she heard him?

'Sorry?' she said with a frown of confusion.

He nodded his head sideways at the door. 'Okay.'

The realisation hit her and she ran to him and hugged him around the neck. 'Oh, thank you! Thank you!'

'Welllll, you were never really just a passenger, were you?' he said with a smile, as she ran past him and into the TARDIS.

He closed the doors, and looked over to the console, where Martha stood with an excited smile. He walked up the ramp, and activated the inertial dampers, engaged the harmonic generator, released the locking down mechanism, pulled the engine release lever, activated the materialise/dematerialise function, and gradually increased the space-time throttle, putting the TARDIS into the Vortex.

'So where do we go next then?' she asked excitedly.

He thought about that question with a smile, and then realised that there had been a serious oversight on their part. He looked her up and down, which Martha mistook for an appreciative look, and blushed.

'Now, I know Bond girls get dressed up to the nine's, when they go to cocktail parties where the villains are,' he told her. 'But trust me; there aren't many adventures we've had where wearing an evening gown and high heels has been an advantage.'

There was one occasion he thought about, where they went to a swanky, fortieth birthday party at a mansion, in another universe . . .

'However, while we are dressed for a party, how does Times Square, 20th July 1969 sound?'

'Hang on, isn't that the moon landing?'

'Yep, it's one hell of a party.' He set the controls, and landed the TARDIS in the middle of Times Square. Martha hurried down the ramp, and out the door, with the Doctor following her out into the throng of party goers.

Hours later, they returned to the TARDIS, laughing and giggling, intoxicated with the atmosphere of celebration.

'Do you want to see them do it?' the Doctor asked her with a grin.

'What, you mean actually see them land?'

He nodded, and set the coordinates for the Sea of Tranquility on the moon.

'Do we have to watch it on a monitor or something?' she asked him, wondering how they were going to watch the historic event.

'Why, don't you want to see it for real?' he asked her as he shut down the console and headed for the doors.

'But what about the air?' she called after him as he turned the latch.

He grinned at her. 'We've got plenty.' He opened the doors, and Martha gasped at the view, it was the second time she'd seen that view in as many days, and it was still stunning. He looked up into the inky blackness, and pointed at a star that seemed to be moving.

'There they are,' he said, pointing at the light that was getting larger by the second. A couple of minutes later, they could clearly see the Lunar Excursion Module hovering over the lunar landscape, kicking up dust as it went. Eventually, there was a huge plume of grey dust, as the LEM touched down. The dust fell, as quickly as it had risen, thanks to the vacuum of space.

'Oh my God, that was fantastic,' she said, clapping her hands. 'Can we get any closer, and, I don't know, maybe follow them down?'

He grinned at her. 'Bitten by the bug huh?'

He reset the console again, then again . . . and again, until they had seen the landing in as many different ways as he could think of.

'Well, I think we've done that to death, time to go and get you something to wear.'

He performed the tricky landing again, and put the TARDIS in her flat. As she went into her bedroom to pack, the Doctor stood, leaning against the door, with his arms crossed. After a few minutes, she came out of her bedroom carrying a large, black holdall. She went to the clothes horse, and putting the holdall on the floor, grabbed all her underwear and stuffed it inside before zipping it up.

'There, I'm ready,' she said with a satisfied smile. The Doctor stepped aside as she picked up the holdall, and stepped inside, never noticing that there was a message on her answer phone.

The Doctor started the time rotor once more, before turning to her and giving her a welcoming smile. 'Right then, we'd better find somewhere for you to put all that and get changed . . . this way.'

He led her through the corridor that led away from the console room. They went past the forbidden 'Rose's' room, although Martha was dying to have a peek inside, to see if she could glean some information on the woman who had made such an impact on his life.

They went past the kitchen come dining room, past a couple of other doors, and a door to their left seemed to click open on its own.

'Here we are then, I think this is your room,' he said, opening the door wide for her.

'Hang on, this is like my old bedroom back at Mum's house, like it was before I moved into my flat,' she said, looking at him suspiciously.

'Whoops, the TARDIS taps into your strongest memories, the ones with the strongest emotional commitment.'

'You mean that your ship is in my head?' she asked in disbelief.

'Oh yes,' he said as a matter of fact. 'She's trying to make you feel at home.'

'What, and now you're telling me the TARDIS is alive.'

He gave her one of his boyish grins. 'Yeah, isn't that brilliant.'

'Yeah, terrific,' she said uncertainly.

'I'll leave you to get settled, and see you in the console room when you're done.' He left the room and gently closed the door behind him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Martha placed the contents of her bag into the wardrobe and the drawers, leaving out a black blouse, blue jeans and a denim jacket for her to change into. She took off her evening gown and hung it up, before putting on the practical clothing.

Checking herself in the mirror, she set off to find the Doctor in the console room. She walked past the "forbidden room" and stopped. She looked up and down the corridor, there was no one about. It wouldn't hurt just to have a little peep would it?

She tried the handle, but the door was locked. She presumed he'd locked it after the last time she had gone to open the door. Oh well, can't blame a girl for trying. She carried on to the console room, where the Doctor gave her a big grin.

'That's better,' he said. 'Dressed for adventure. So where do you fancy going next? Are you hungry? I could do with a bite to eat. How about you? Have you ever tried a kronkburger? No course you haven't, never eaten out away from the Earth before have you?' He rattled on without giving her a chance to answer, and she just laughed for the joy of being on the TARDIS.

'Kronkburger sounds great,' she said with a smile.

'Right, kronkburger and chips coming right up.' He adjusted the controls as the TARDIS swayed this way and that before coming to a stop with a gentle "clump".

'Here we are then,' the Doctor said as he opened the door of the TARDIS for Martha. 'Reblais Beta; best kronkburgers in this part of the galaxy.'

'Urgh! Smells like they've gone off,' Martha said, wrinkling her nose as she waved her hand in front of it.

'Hmmm, yeah. Sort of boiled cabbage and bad eggs,' he said, looking around in confusion. 'Must be vegetarian option day.'

'And where are all the busy streets and shops you mentioned? All I can see are tents and huts.'

The Doctor realised that they weren't where they had expected to be (again). 'Ah, right. I really must get those gyroceptors looked at. Now, bad eggs, tents and huts . . . we're on Belepheron!'

'And is that good or bad?' Martha asked uncertainly.

The Doctor gave her his grin of enthusiasm. 'No idea. Let's go and find out what kind of burgers they eat.'

They walked towards the collection of primitive buildings, and the inhabitants stopped to watch them with smiles of curiosity. The natives looked like pre-teen humans, being small in stature, with dark green hair and a yellowish green tinge to their skin.

Martha was reminded of a scene from "Close Encounters", when the little aliens greeted Richard Dreyfuss and led him into the mother ship. They were friendly and whispering excitedly amongst themselves.

An elderly man emerged from a large hut at the far end of the circular village, wearing a colourful headdress and face paint, and it was obvious that he was the tribal leader.

Ignoring Martha completely, the leader greeted the Doctor with a bow. 'Pale skinned giant, you honour us with your visit.'

The Doctor grinned. 'Do I? Yes, of course I do. Brilliant, eh Martha?'

'Yeah, very nice for you,' she said sarcastically. Having dark skin and being a woman was not a good combination in an unenlightened society.

'We must celebrate,' the chieftain said, and started giving instructions and hand signals to the villagers.

The Doctor was ushered along with the chieftain, whilst Martha went with the female villagers in a different direction.

'Doctor?' Martha called out uncertainly, looking over her shoulder towards him.

He looked back and gave her a cheery wave. 'Don't worry; it's probably just their custom for the men and women to celebrate separately.'

'Don't worry he says,' she muttered to herself. 'Easy for you to say.'

She was led to a raised, circular dais that was surrounded by a semicircular curtain. In the centre of the dais was a smooth wooden pole. She was encouraged onto the dais by a group of giggling, excited girls. It was difficult to assess how old they were because of their small size, although they did seem to have mature cleavages in front of them.

They helped her take off her denim jacket, and she didn't resist, giving them an embarrassed smile. When they tried to undo her blouse and jeans, she patted their hands away.

'Er, I think we'll stop at the jacket thanks,' she said. Suddenly, a dozen pair of hands were at her clothing, and within seconds she was standing there naked.

'DOCTOR!?' she called out, realising that things were taking a turn for the worse.

Just as she called out, the curtain was parted, and she could see the Doctor sitting on a wooden throne next to the chieftain. The throne was about two sizes too small for the Doctor, and he was trying to get his bottom in between the arms of the chair.

There were tiered benches in a circle from where he was sitting, around to the dais where Martha was standing. He could see the village girls had been having fun doing what girls do, and he saw Martha was half crossing her legs in a crouch, and holding her forearms over the front of her chest in an attempt to hide her nakedness.

'Martha, what's going on?' he called across the space between them. He was getting an excited, friendly vibe from everyone, and presumed they were going to dress Martha in their traditional sarongs. There was certainly no sense of menace or danger; if anything, it was the opposite, a feeling of gratitude.

'I was hoping you could tell me that,' she called back with a hint of annoyance.

'Maybe they think you're the entertainment and you've got to pole dance or something,' he said with a cheeky smile. 'I'll try and find out.' He went back into a conversation with the chieftain.

He then heard Martha gasp loudly as an apparently cold, green gunk was rubbed on her body by tiny hands. 'Now what?' she called out.

A lot of religions all over the galaxy anointed special individuals to symbolize the introduction of a sacramental or divine influence, a holy emanation, spirit, power or a God. 'Oh, it looks like you're being anointed. That's probably a great honour. I'll try and find out.'

'We thank you for the opportunity to feast,' the chieftain said with a bow of his head.

'Your welcome,' the Doctor said, a little puzzled. 'I mean, all we did was turn up out of the blue.'

Suddenly, the village women grabbed Martha's arms and tied her wrists together with rope before two of the women starting to pull on the other end that was looped through a metal ring at the top of the pole. She was slowly pulled towards the pole, and her arms stretched up above her head.

With her cheek resting against the pole, she looked over to the Doctor who was directly in front of her. 'DOCTOR! Somehow I don't think this is a great honour. A great humiliation more like . . .'

The Doctor's smile turned to a scowl as he suddenly realised that she was in trouble. 'Now just a minute . . .' He leaped to his feet and looked down at the chieftain. 'What's going on?'

One of the villagers had started walking around Martha, spiralling the rope around her forearms, then her upper arms, her neck, shoulders, chest, waist, bottom, thighs, calfs, and finally her ankles.

She was now securely lashed to the pole, when a young woman tried to put an apple-like fruit in Martha's mouth. 'No thanks, I'm not hungry right now. DOCTOR!'

Martha felt a number of hands holding her head still as the woman with the apple-like fruit reached up and held Martha's nose. She held out for as long as she could, and then took a gasping breath. She then felt an apple-like fruit in her mouth.

She bit the fruit and spat it out in triumph. There was a disappointed "Ohhh" from the small women, and then the process was repeated. This time, when Martha gasped for breath, the fruit was thrust into her mouth, and a cloth tied behind her neck to hold it in place.

Looking satisfied, the women started to lower the pole into a horizontal position over what Martha now noticed was a fiery pit. ''Octa!' she tried to shout through the fruit gag. 'Oo umphin.' She could feel the heat of the flames below on her bare flesh as she started to slowly rotate on the spit.

'Hang on,' he called to her. 'Big misunderstanding . . . well, massive really . . . humungous actually. It looks like we've been invited to a banquet in my honour . . . well, I've been invited as the guest of honour, I'm afraid you've been invited as the main course.'

''OCTA!' she growled through the gag. It wasn't time for him to ramble on; it was time for him to do something.

'Okay, sorry, I'm on it. Just got to sort out the tribal etiquette. Bit delicate this kind of diplomacy.'

'I'll 'ive 'oo 'oody 'iplomacy . . .' she looked down into the fiery pit as she rotated and the heat stung her eyes. She could feel the green gunk seasoning sizzling on her skin.

After another scorching rotation, she felt the pole starting to rise back to the vertical, and when it clunked into place, she was looking into the dark, ancient eyes of the Doctor. He reached around behind her neck and untied the cloth before taking the apple-like fruit out of her mouth and taking a bite.

'Mmm, tangy . . . bit like a lime,' he said with a smile. 'You all right?'

'I'll be better when I'm free from this pole.'

'Ah yes, here, let me.' He stooped down and started to untie her ankles and then unwrap the rope from around her body. 'Dark skinned bipedal animals are seen as food animals on this world,' he explained as he worked his way up her body. 'Simple mistake to make really . . . I had to tell them a little white lie to get them to release you.'

'What little white lie?' she asked as she stood in front of him with her wrists bound; her arms and legs doing their best to cover her nakedness.

'Remember the genetic transfer in the hospital on the moon?' he asked her.

Remember it, how could she ever forget it. It was one of the best kisses she'd ever had. But she didn't want to tell him that and inflate his ego any more than it already was. 'Yeah, I think so. Why?'

He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the green gunk from around her lips and from out of her eyes. 'I told the chieftain that you were my mate, and now I've got to prove it.'

Martha looked over to the thrones and saw the tribal chief looking at them intently. She looked into the Doctor's eyes and nodded. He cupped her cheeks in his hands and gently kissed her on the lips.

Time seemed to stand still for Martha as she was absorbed by the awesomeness of the kiss. It seemed to go on forever and she became light headed. Didn't he ever breathe?

When he broke away from the kiss, he held her shoulders steady as she wobbled on jelly legs. He shrugged off his long coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. He then held out her arms and started to untie her wrists.

'Thank you,' she said, pulling the open front of the coat around her. A woman approached and presented her with a bouquet of wild flowers. Martha accepted them with a smile and the coat fell open again. She pulled it around her again and looked at the Doctor. 'What's this, more seasoning?'

He laughed and hugged her shoulder. 'It's an apology. They're really sorry about trying to cook my wife,' he told her, before continuing hesitantly. 'And I'm afraid I've still got to convince them of that.'

'Wha, I thought we just did that,' she said, although a replay of that snog wouldn't go amiss. How many times did they need her to do it she wondered?

'Well, er, the chieftains mate needs to see us get . . . intimate so that she can report back to him,' said the Doctor with a sheepish smile.

'You are kiddin' me!' Martha said in disbelief.

'No. Originally the chief wanted the whole village to watch, but I managed to get it down to one person that he trusts. That's why you had a couple of rotations on the spit . . . sorry.'

Martha couldn't believe her luck. Okay, it wasn't ideal circumstances, but beggars couldn't be choosers. That didn't sound right in her head, because she wasn't begging for it. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, yes that was better.

'So,' she said, sidling up to him. 'Where d'ya want to do it then?'

'Ah, right,' he squeaked. 'There's a tent over there that newlyweds use after the ceremony.'

The chieftains mate led them to a tent made of animal hides and held open the flap at the entrance for them. They stooped inside and saw a variety of soft animal furs on the floor. The woman stepped in behind them and lowered the flap before sitting crossed legged at the entrance.

'Right, we'd better make this look convincing then,' he said as he gently lowered Martha onto one of the furs.

'You'll get no argument from me,' she said with a saucy smile.

'Good. Touch my temples with your first and second fingers,' he instructed.

'Eh?' she queried, but he just waggled his eyebrows for her to play along. 'Okay,' she said uncertainly, and did as he said.

'Now do the same to the gooseberry at the door, it's a ritual that we do before . . . well, you know.'

'Is it? Oh, okay.' She got up onto her knees and touched the woman's temples.

The Doctor then lay Martha back down and touched her temples in the same way, before turning to the woman at the entrance and touching her temples. He caught the woman's shoulders and lowered her to the floor as she passed out.

'Right, time to sneak out the back door,' he said with a grin.

'What did you do to her?' Martha asked open mouthed.

'A simple solomnastic suggestion.' He saw Martha's puzzled look. 'I suggested that she was tired and needed to sleep.'

He poked his head under the rear edge of the tent and had a quick look around. Seeing the coast was clear, he beckoned for Martha to crawl through the gap, and they quietly crept back to the TARDIS.

'Right, I'm going in the bath,' Martha said as she walked past the console.

'I'll make us something to eat as we missed the celebratory lunch', the Doctor said with a cheeky smile. 'Pig roast all right with you?'

She stuck her tongue out at him, laughed, and headed for her room. A while later, she appeared in the kitchen-dining room in her bathrobe and towel around her head. The Doctor was sitting at the table with two plates of food.

'Kronkburger and chips, with a fizzy drink,' he said.

Martha laughed and sat down to tuck into her burger. 'Mmmm, thish ish good,' she said, covering her mouth as she spoke through a mouthful of food. She hesitated for a moment before continuing. 'Can I ask you something?'

'Yeah, of course.'

'Something about Rose?'

His face became an unreadable mask. He continued eating without speaking or looking at her.

'Only while I was in the bath, I was thinking . . . wondering if that kind of thing happened to her? Was she as useless as me, getting into trouble and having to be rescued by you all the time?'

His face softened into a smile as he realised she was feeling uncertain about her suitability as a passenger in the TARDIS.

'You're not useless,' he said kindly, 'just inexperienced. Rose got into her fair share of scrapes, but she was resourceful like you.' He gave her a cheeky grin. 'Although I think you've got one up on her, she never got smeared in green gunk and tied naked to a roasting spit.'

"So there's something I'm better at than his ex", she thought resentfully.

'Although there was this one time when she ended up in a skimpy fur bikini top and loin cloth in the Neanderthal era,' he said with a boyish grin. She thought he was finally going to open up to her, but he stopped talking and continued eating his burger.

He was driving her crazy! How long was he going to mope about, missing his ex? She'd had boyfriends who had dumped her when she thought they were the love of her life, but she got over it and moved on.

He could see that she was expecting him to say something, so he did one of his standard, mercurial changes of subject. 'Sorry we missed Reblais Beta, can I make it up to you by taking you to the beach?'

'That depends on which beach; Brighton or Bondi?'

'Nacre,' he said, which elicited a frown. 'Twin suns, crystal clear blue water, and beaches that stretch further than the eye can see.'

'Sounds perfect,' she said with a smile. 'All we have to do is get there,' she finished sarcastically.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Martha felt a thrill of anticipation whenever she stepped from the TARDIS. With the Doctor anything was possible, except for arriving at their destination on the first attempt. Their last stop had been bang on target, and they had managed to land on the holiday planet of Nacre.

The Doctor's description had also been bang on. The beaches had seemed endless and twin suns had warmed the clear blue water. It had been fantastic. But not, she thought, gazing down, anything like as fantastic as Earth.

The Doctor said something and, although he was standing right next to her, Martha barely heard a word. It was impossible to drag her eyes away from the globe that shone through the oblong display window stretching right the way around the curved room. For all the wonders she had seen during her travels, there really was no place like home.

'I said,' a voice murmured into her ear, 'are you going to stand there gawping all day? We're not on holiday any more, you know.'

Martha sighed, remembering the tranquility of Nacre. Not to mention the attentions of the hotel's extremely handsome waiters. Pity the Doctor couldn't sit still for more than five minutes or she'd still have been there.

'And there was me thinking you knew how to show a girl a good time.'

'This is a good time.' The Doctor's reflection grinned at her in the glass. 'Come on, who wants to laze around on a beach when there's a mystery to solve? Those transmissions the TARDIS intercepted. The whale song – ring any bells?'

Reality came crashing back, and Martha remembered where they were. On a space station; a big one, if the endless but eerily deserted corridors were anything to go by. The large, round room they were in reminded her of those old images of NASA mission control. Curved rows of workstations radiated from a central hub, each occupied by a man or woman peering into monitors.

Martha half-expected to see guards approaching. But she and the Doctor might have been invisible for all the attention anyone paid them. If only she knew why the TARDIS had brought them here, materialising in a storage hangar in the depths of the station. It obviously had something to do with those strange signals, which had sounded to her like whale song.

Maybe they came from the giant spacecraft she could see. There were hundreds of them, drifting across the planet so slowly they hardly seemed to be moving.

'Those ships, are they human or alien?'

'You lot don't have ships that big in 2088.' The Doctor squinted at them. 'Anyway, they're not ships.'

'Then what are they?'

'No idea.'

'I thought you knew everything.' Martha peered out again and recoiled as a metallic sphere bristling with antennae rushed through space towards her. She took an involuntary step back, expecting it to smash through the glass, sighing with relief when it veered away at the last moment and disappeared. 'What was that?'

'Oh, just one of the monitor probes.'

Martha jumped. It wasn't the Doctor who'd answered.

She spun round. A kindly-looking elderly man with thick glasses and receding hair smiled at her. The smile faltered slightly.

'Sorry, I don't think we've met. I take it you're one of the new arrivals. I'm Conrad Morris—'

'Professor Morris!' The Doctor grabbed the man's arm. 'I'm such an admirer of your work. Martha, this is the genius who rewrote the rulebook on bioengineering. Then tore it up and wrote a completely new rulebook!'

'Oh, nonsense!' Morris protested, but he looked rather pleased.

'John Smith,' the Doctor said, flashing his psychic paper. 'This is my associate Doctor Martha Jones. Sorry we're late, couldn't resist the duty free shop.'

Morris barely had time to acknowledge Martha before the Doctor was steering him away from the window. 'Now where was I? Oh yes! Those huge things in the sky, the signals – don't really have to say much more, do I?'

'Indeed not. There's still a lot of data to analyse, as you can imagine, but the provisional results are extremely promising. In fact, far better than we could possibly have imagined – it seems the Benefactors were not exaggerating.'

Martha was lost. 'What's going on here? And who are the Benefactors?'

'Have you been underground for the last month?' Morris asked, not unkindly.

'Actually, yeah, she has,' the Doctor said, 'deep underground, testing this new theory about stalactites. Or was it stalagmites? Which are the ones that grow down? Anyway, never mind! You were going to tell Martha about the Benefactors.'

The professor carried on walking, the Doctor at his side. Martha fell in beside them, determined not to be left behind. 'The Benefactors, it appears, are the salvation of mankind,' Morris said, rather pompously. 'It sounded too good to be true, at first, and there was no shortage of sceptics. But, judging by the initial results, the sceptics were wrong.'

Martha shook her head, still baffled. 'Why don't you start at the beginning? I've been . . . away, don't forget.'

'I'd like to know who these Benefactors are,' the Doctor said. 'I mean, don't you think it's a bit of a coincidence, being the good guys and having a name like the Benefactors? It'd be like having bad guys called the Villains.'

Morris shrugged. 'It was probably just a literal translation.'

'So, those big floating things,' Martha said. 'They're the Benefactors, right?'

'Hardly. The Benefactors remain many thousands of light years away. They are a solitary race. What you see is the gift they sent us.'

'I still don't get it.'

'Wait until we reach central analysis,' the professor told her. 'I'll replay the broadcast for you both. Then everything will become clear.'

'Broadcast, eh?' The Doctor grinned. 'Good! I haven't seen any TV in ages.'

Morris led them along an aisle that ran between the banks of monitors until they reached the central hub, a large oval desk laden with equipment. Standing around it, gazing up at screens suspended overhead, were a dozen or so people, all dressed in white coats. Martha guessed they must be the more important scientists on board.

The screens streamed lines of data that meant nothing to her but obviously spoke volumes to the scientists, scribbling away with styli on hand-held pads as they studied them. One broke off to confer quietly with a keyboard operator. Otherwise no one said a word. There were no friendly conversations, no laughter and no coffee breaks. There was a definite tension in the air.

'Not much office banter is there?' she said lightly.

Morris frowned. 'Not when the future of the world is at stake, Doctor Jones. Everyone here has family and friends on Earth. People they care about.'

'Sorry, I didn't mean . . .'

'No, no, I'm sure you didn't,' the professor said, smiling to show he was not offended. 'But you must understand, we are in the front line. We'll be the first to know if the Benefactors were right or, God forbid, if they were wrong and the Earth is doomed. That's a heavy burden.'

'Funny thing,' the Doctor said. 'I have no idea who these Benefactors are or what they're doing, but I've already taken a dislike to them. Save the planet or don't save it, but don't keep people dangling. I hate dangling.'

A serious-looking man who had been standing at the side of the hub now approached them. He wore a dark suit and fiddled with his flashy wristwatch.

'Hello!' the Doctor said brightly. 'Who're you, then?'

'Daniel Grant,' the man answered, face a granite mask. 'Head of security.'

The Doctor flashed his psychic paper again and introduced them both.

'I should have guessed your people would send someone here,' Grant sneered. His eyes swept over the Doctor, taking in his shock of hair and the pinstripe suit that clashed with his trainers. 'You don't look like a scientist.'

'Doctor Smith's a bit eccentric but a genius,' Martha said.

'Right on both counts,' the Doctor beamed. 'Now, then, I believe Professor Morris was going to replay the Benefactors' broadcast for us.'

'Why?' Grant was openly suspicious. 'Is there anyone on Earth who hasn't seen it a hundred times already?'

'Let's make it a hundred and one,' the Doctor said, putting on his glasses and peering expectantly at the screens. 'Never know, could have missed something.'

Grant stared at him. 'Fine, whatever, but I think you're just wasting time.'

Professor Morris stepped across to the nearest workstation and spoke quietly to the operator. 'Won't be a moment,' he said as he rejoined them. 'You know, I'll never forget the first time I saw it. I was filled with such hope.'

'Why?' Martha asked.

'Because the world was dying, that's why! Atmospheric pollution, global warming, it was all reaching critical point. The world's governments played it down. They didn't want mass panic on their hands. But the evidence was there for everyone to see – the icecaps melting, the floods, the air so choked with noxious gases that some days it hurt to breathe.'

Martha could scarcely believe it. Everyone had been talking about global warming for as long as she could remember, but she hadn't thought too much about it. It was something to worry about in the future. Now, it seemed, was that time.

'So when the Benefactors made contact,' the professor continued, eyes far away, 'it was like our prayers had been answered. But of course you know all that.'

'Course we do,' the Doctor said. 'But I can never resist a good story. Go on – what happened next?'

A burst of static interrupted the data stream on the screen immediately overhead. As soon as Martha saw the creature that appeared on it she was shocked into numbness.

'People of Earth,' it said. Its voice sounded composed of liquid, like someone gargling while they talked. 'We feel your planet's suffering. We feel your pain and your terror. But do not be afraid. We can help you.'

Martha barely took in the words; she was too transfixed by the alien speaking them. Its impossibly long head was like a living balloon, with tiny eyes near the top and a slit of a mouth at the other end. It was the colour of dough and did not appear to have ears or a nose. The head quivered as it spoke, as though under-filled with gas. If that was its head, Martha thought with a shudder, she was glad she couldn't see its body.

'No,' she heard, a breathy gasp that for a moment she thought was coming from the speakers. Then she realised it was the Doctor, not the alien, that had spoken. The smile had vanished from his face and he was staring at the bizarre creature with an expression somewhere between anger and loathing.

'We have the technology to scour your atmosphere, to remove the poisonous gases and give your planet the chance to breathe again.'

'No!' the Doctor repeated, so loudly that everyone turned to stare at him. 'You have to stop them. If you don't, everyone will die.'

* * *

The atmosphere in the control centre had changed. When Martha walked in, all heads turned her way and the looks she was given ranged from suspicious to downright hostile. Even Professor Morris was scowling as he marched up to them, waving a finger at Martha.

'What on earth is going on? And where's Doctor Smith?'

Martha shrugged, realising she could still help the Doctor by keeping silent.

'I have men searching for him,' Grant said. 'He can't hide for ever.'

'I don't understand,' Morris said. 'We're trying to save the world. What could you possibly hope to achieve with all this . . . nonsense?'

Martha looked away from him, towards the overhead screens. The Doctor looked straight back at her.

'Hello,' he said cheerfully, giving a little wave.

'What the hell?' Grant's cheeks flushed with anger when he realised the Doctor had hijacked every screen in the room. Martha saw the TARDIS console in the background and sighed with relief. She'd been worried Grant's men might have found him but behind those old doors he was safe.

'Martha, look – I'm on the telly!'

Grant rounded on Martha. 'How's he doing this?'

'You tell me.'

'Now then,' the Doctor continued. 'I suppose you've got a million questions but they're just going to have to wait. See, while you lot were running around like headless chickens, some of us were working.'

'Tell me,' Grant said. 'Or you'll only make it worse for yourself.'

'I don't know how he's doing it, all right?' And that was the truth. The Doctor moved in mysterious ways, when he wasn't jumping about, getting all excited.

'And guess what? I worked it all out! Although to be fair, it wasn't that much of a challenge, not for me at any rate. Where was I? Oh yeah, I know.'

The Doctor's face suddenly vanished from the screen, to be replaced by a close-up shot of one of the floating bio-forms. Martha grimaced at the sight of it. The thing was a shapeless grey bubble studded with gill-like protrusions. Various parts of it bulged and then flattened out as it drew in and discharged gases. While there was nothing to provide a sense of scale, she already knew it was huge.

'Now listen,' the Doctor's voice piped up.

A high-pitched keening echoed around the control room, followed by a sonorous rumbling. Seconds later the unearthly duet replayed itself.

'Yeah, I know, it sounds like whale song. But it's not. What you're hearing are encoded signals.'

Morris frowned. 'What's he talking about?'

'One signal goes out from each beastie, transmitting how much gas they've stored up. The other responds with instructions to maintain position.'

'He's insane,' Grant hissed. 'He can't prove anything.'

'Until, that is,' the Doctor said, 'I do this.'

The signal changed. The whale song became a harsh trilling. Immediately the creature ceased undulating. Gasps of horror filled the room as it began to sink, slowly spiralling down with its lethal cargo towards Earth.

'My God,' Morris gasped, staring through the window.

Martha looked out and immediately saw something was wrong. The creatures' movements were no longer random. Instead they were drifting in formation across the globe.

'What are they doing?' she asked, not expecting an answer.

'Taking up position,' the Doctor said, striding into the room, sonic screwdriver in his hand. 'They know we're on to them.'

Grant made a move towards him.

The Doctor shook his head sharply. 'Remember what happened the last time you tried?' Grant eyed the screwdriver and backed off.

'I don't understand,' Martha said, eyes flicking from the Doctor to the screen. It had frozen, and his unmoving face stared back at her.

'That? I recorded it before I left the TARDIS – just added a simple time delay.'

'Yeah, but why?'

'I had to get everyone's attention or Mr Grouch here wouldn't have given me the chance to prove my point.'

'You've doomed everyone,' Grant scowled.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. 'Don't be so dramatic. I just hacked the signal and made one of them think it had been ordered to drop.'

'You killed it?' Martha asked.

'They're not sentient beings, Martha, just big windbags with tiny nervous systems that can only respond to basic commands.' He brushed past them to the nearest workstation. 'That one will come down smack in the middle of the Atlantic. No one gets hurt. Oh, and the creature itself will probably survive, if that makes you feel any better.'

'What about the rest?' Morris was staring anxiously at the creatures. 'It wouldn't take many to wipe out a city.'

'So you do believe me! Brilliant!'

'He might, but I don't,' Grant said through gritted teeth.

'That thing only went down because you interfered. Now you've set the rest of them off.'

'You still don't get it, do you?'

'Doctor!' Martha cried. The creatures had suddenly picked up speed and were now racing across the globe.

'All right, keep your shirt on. Those things don't exactly rush.'

'They're rushing now.'

The Doctor glanced out and frowned. 'Clever . . . they're

using the gas to propel themselves,' he muttered, and then started flashing the sonic across the workstation.

Martha said nothing, not wanting to break his concentration. Morris joined her. The professor flinched as the swarming creatures broke up into clusters of swirling patterns, high above the continents. Martha looked anxiously at the Doctor. Whatever he was doing, she wished he would hurry up and get on with it. Time was running out.

'They'll hit the cities first,' the Doctor called, eyes fixed on the workstation. 'Kill billions at a stroke and then wait for the gas cloud to finish the rest.'

'Can't the military take them out with missiles?' Martha asked.

'Yeah, except you'd have a massive explosion instead of a burst of lethal gas – not much of an improvement.' He waved his free hand dismissively, obviously trying to focus on what he was doing. From the grim expression on his face it wasn't going well. 'Frequency's constantly changing . . . can't lock it down . . .'

Martha chewed on a nail. The creatures were slowing, which had to mean they were getting ready to drop. Far below she could see a shadow over London; her own family would be gone, but she'd have descendants living in the city and she couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to them, or to anyone else, come to that. She stared at the Doctor but his face was unreadable. He was sonicking like crazy but nothing was happening. Martha felt like screaming.

'Isn't there anything we can do?' Morris pleaded.

The Doctor suddenly smiled. 'You could just ask them to stop.'

'We can communicate with those creatures?'

'Not them! Blimey, for a clever man you aren't half dense at times. I meant those Benefactors of yours.'

'We told you,' Grant barked. 'They're light years away.'

'Are they really?' Now the Doctor was playing the sonic flamboyantly across the work station. 'Thing is,' he said. 'I'd already cracked the code so I only had to lock the signal. Then I could hack into their system. Like so.'

Martha hurried away from the window as the space outside distorted. 'Cloaking device,' the Doctor grinned. 'And – oops, guess who broke it.'

The stars disappeared as a gigantic shape shimmered into existence alongside the station. It was a spaceship, but unlike any Martha had seen before – a conical mound of bone-like structures, held together by what looked like a dull greyish resin and dotted with pinpricks of light.

There were no engines that she could see. Perhaps they were there but she just didn't recognise them. The ship was big enough to dwarf the station and so utterly alien her mind struggled to comprehend it.

'There you go,' the Doctor said, rubbing his hands together gleefully.

Grant stared slack-jawed at the Benefactor ship. Even Morris, eminent scientist as he was, was having trouble accepting the proof his own eyes presented. 'B-b-but . . .' he stammered.

'My thoughts exactly!' the Doctor said, putting one hand on the professor's shoulder and the other on Grant's.

'Every tracking station on Earth will have picked that up. Every nuclear missile you've got will be aimed right at it.'

'What about the gas bombs?' Martha asked. 'Blowing up the ship won't be enough to stop them.'

'It won't get that far – look.' The grey creatures were moving away from the Earth, floating harmlessly into space. 'The Cineraria know they've been spotted. They'll already have detected Earth's defences. Like I told you, they don't do explosions. They do stealth. And I blew their cover. If just one nuke hits them, it's goodnight. So they've admitted defeat.'

Grant was still staring out of the window. 'They're going,' he breathed.

Martha looked. The Cineraria ship was sliding out of orbit.

'What's to say they won't return?' Morris had snapped out of his stupor.

'They don't know about me. As far as they're concerned, it was the human race that beat them. That little mouse has roared. So, no, they won't be back.'

'We were wrong,' Morris said, eyeing Martha and the Doctor. 'Thank you.'

'Just doing my job,' the Doctor said in a bad cowboy accent. Then he turned serious. 'But if you want to thank me, save your planet the hard way.'

'What do you mean?'

'No short cuts, no quick fixes. You don't need anyone's help. The Cineraria think you lot are clever but I know you are. You're really quite amazing.'

Martha smiled. She loved it when the Doctor got excited and now he was positively bouncing, hands flying all over the place.

'I mean, you can be stupid and careless,' he went on.

'Look at what you did to the Earth. And yet – and yet – there was Newton and Einstein and Hawking and all the others, all those great minds. And all the beauty – oh, don't get me started on that! The Sistine Chapel, the Eiffel Tower, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon—'

'Doctor,' Martha interrupted. Sometimes he needed reining in.

'What? Oh, yeah, sorry. Anyway, my point is, you have the brains and the strength to solve your own problems. The Cineraria didn't completely clear the atmosphere. But they bought you plenty of breathing space. So use it! Finish the job. You're smart enough. And, besides, if you find that gas bag floating somewhere in the Atlantic you can nick their technology.'

'Yes,' Morris said, eyes widening as he considered the possibilities. 'I don't pretend we'll understand it all but I am sure we can extrapolate . . .'

He was still babbling on when the Doctor took Martha's hand and led her quietly out through the doors. 'Saved the world in less than an hour,' the Doctor said as they headed for the lift. 'I think that's a record.'

'Full of ourselves, aren't we?'

'Yeah, well, you can't blame me. Sometimes I'm so clever I even surprise myself. And it takes a lot to surprise me, I can tell you.'

'Well, you can use some of that genius of yours to take me to Earth.'

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. 'Well, you did it. Surprised me. We've got the whole of time and space to explore and you want to go home?'

'I don't want to go home,' Martha said. 'I want you to show me the world ten years from now so I can see how it all works out.'

'Then Earth ten years from now it is. But don't you worry. They manage to sort themselves out, just like I said. Everything's brilliant!'

Martha laughed and slipped her arm through his. As long as the Doctor was around, everything really was brilliant.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9  
**

'Berlin!' cried the Doctor, throwing open the doors. 'Definitely Berlin.' He took in the woods ahead of him, the damp, scrubby grassland all around and the white-tipped mountains that hemmed in the landscape, and his sharp features hardened further in a frown.

'Sort of. Maybe.' He marched outside, then turned to Martha who was hovering in the police box's doorway. 'Berlin, d'you think, Martha?'

After missing Reblais Beta completely and ending up as the main dish on Belepheron, Martha wondered if the Doctor ever ended up where he intended. "Course I do" he'd said, before adding the proviso, "most of the time".

"Do you know how tricky it is to navigate a path through time and space? All those potentials, probabilities and possibilities, it's not easy you know", he'd said defensively.

"Why don't you try and explain it to me then", Martha had asked.

"Transdimesional physics is very complex, I don't think your human mind would be able to grasp it."

"Try me", she'd challenged.

So he thought that Einstein's old professor, Hermann Minkowski's address about space-time to the 80th Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians on the 21st of September 1908 would be a good place to start.

In answer to his question about Berlin, Martha gave him a look that said, very eloquently, "Don't think so". 'How many mountains in Berlin?' she asked.

'Not huge amounts,' the Doctor conceded. 'One or two. In fact . . . less than one. Probably.' He brightened. 'There's a mountain in the town of Berlin in New York State . . .'

'I think I've had enough of New York for a while,' said Martha, remembering Daleks, Hooverville, a mutant pig-slave and a showgirl from their last visit there. 'Anyway, we can't be anywhere near a city. Air's too fresh.' There was a playful gleam in her deep brown eyes. 'Is this really 1908, or are we in prehistoric times or something?'

'You suggesting we could be seventy million years off course?' The Doctor tried to give her a look of disapproval, but he couldn't help brightening at the thought. 'That would be fantastic, wouldn't it! See any dinosaurs about? I'd say it was unlikely with all the glacial activity that's obviously been shaping the scenery round here, but . . .' He beamed. 'Look at that valley! That tor! Miss Jones, let's tour the tor.'

He grabbed her by the hand and yanked her off on a walk through the heather, his long brown coat flapping round his ankles, his dark suit brightened by a yellow-and-red checked scarf that reminded Martha of Rupert the Bear.

Her own outfit was dressier; a gauzy green silk dress with a gold leaf pattern and a close-fitting beaded jacket. But then, she had been promised they would be attending a formal function.

'What about this German bloke and his oh-so-important address then?' she asked.

'Old Minkowski! Yeah, if it is September 1908, he'll be off to talk to the Assembly of German Naturalists and Physicians, telling them all that space-time is the fourth dimension. Pivotal moment for world physics.' The Doctor laughed. 'Well, he'll just have to bluff his way through without me. We'll stay here dinosaur hunting, just in case. Maybe we could have a prehistoric picnic. Fancy a picnic? I think we should have a picnic . . .'

Martha smiled and thought back to her old, normal life. Life before she'd picked up with a man who travelled through time and space in a magic police box he called a TARDIS, who whistled past stars and planets like she passed stops on the Circle Line. 'Yeah, well, my family never had too much time for picnics . . .'

'Well, I really, really like picnics. I like picnic baskets. Especially those ones with the separate little compartments for your knives and forks, that's genius –'

The Doctor's enthusiasm was muted by a high-pitched screech of brakes and a loud crashing noise. A cloud of sooty smoke rose up from behind a close-by hillock.

For a moment, Martha and the Doctor shared a wordless look. Then, as one, they ran full pelt towards the sound.

'Car crash?' Martha panted. 'The engine sounded –'

'Throaty, inefficient, and probably downright dangerous . . .' The Doctor gave her a wild grin. 'I want a go!'

He put on a spurt of speed and reached the brow of the hillock ahead of her. 'Oh, yes!' he cried in delight at what he saw. 'Look at that! An Opel double phaeton.'

'And one slightly crumpled driver,' Martha noted, reaching his side. An old red motor car, quite possibly a close relative of Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, had obviously failed to take a sharp corner and was blocking a narrow lane; its bonnet and fenders were bent and scraped after a close encounter with a dry-stone wall.

A tall man in a tartan sports coat with a high-standing collar was attempting to push the car away from the wall. A tweed cap was perched on his head of fair curls. He was covered in dirt and grease and had cut his hand quite badly. 'I say!' he called upon sighting the Doctor and Martha. 'Could you offer a chap assistance? Rear wheels locked on the turn. Fiercest sideways skid you ever saw.'

Martha was already making her way down the steep slope to the roadside. The piles of little 'black cherries' dotted around the grass suggested these narrow roads were more used to seeing sheep than motorists. 'What did you do?' she asked, studying his injured hand.

'Sliced it on the blasted fender,' the man said, looking pale. He had a large, beaky nose and brilliant blue eyes. He grinned at her suddenly. 'Excuse the language, my dear. The name's Meredith. Victor Meredith.'

'I'm Martha Jones.' She cast a look at the Doctor, who was lavishing his attention on the car. 'And this is –'

'– an Opel Ten-Eighteen,' said the Doctor, 'pure elegance from Russelsheim.' He caressed the driving seat, which looked more like a cream leather sofa welded to the chassis, and tapped the walnut steering wheel. 'And look! Three-speed epicyclic gearbox with pre-selector control . . .'

'Indeed yes, and all brand new!' Victor grinned, then winced as Martha whipped his white racing scarf from about his neck. 'You an autocar enthusiast yourself, old buck?'

'Used to be, used to be. I'm the Doctor.'

Victor's eyes turned back to Martha as she wrapped the scarf around his wounded hand. 'And you're his nurse, eh, Miss Jones?'

'Training to be a doctor, actually,' she agreed. "Or I will be in about a century from now".

'Capital, capital.' Victor smiled. 'Lady doctor, eh? Well, I dare say they do things differently where you're from.'

'Some things.' Martha conceded. 'Are you all right? You're looking a bit wobbly.'

'Can't stand the sight of my own blood,' Victor confessed.

'But animal blood's all right?' The Doctor had pulled a cover from the back seats to reveal a collection of serious-looking shotguns. 'You've got some heavy-duty hunting gear here.'

'That's because I'm here for some heavy-duty hunting,' Victor agreed, flexing his bound hand gingerly. 'The Lakes'll be alive with hunters, I should think.'

'The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable . . .' The Doctor frowned. 'Hang on a minute – Lakes? What, you mean the Lake District?'

'Goodbye, Berlin,' sighed Martha. 'Hello, Pacamac.'

'Lake District, brilliant! I love it round here, the lakes, the waters, the meres . . . and then there's your tarns, of course, your tiddly little lakes up in the mountains. Tarn . . .' The Doctor wrapped his lips around the word. 'Good name for a planet, isn't it – Tarn. Tarrrn. TARRRRRRR-RRRRRRR-NNNN . . .'

Victor looked at him bewildered, then turned back to Martha. 'Are you sure you're not his nurse?'

'Miss Jones is an ambassador for the distant land of Freedonia,' the Doctor announced. 'I'm escorting her and seeing she wants for nothing.'

'That'll be the day.' Martha muttered.

'Freedonia – is that one of ours?' wondered Victor. 'Difficult to keep track.'

'Believe me.' Martha told him, 'this is a whole other world for me.'

'Hang about!' boomed the Doctor. 'Lakes alive with hunters?' He reached into the back of the car and hefted a fearsome-looking weapon. 'What's going on? You've got an elephant gun here! Elephants in the Lake District?'

'Bigger game than that.' Victor looked at them both, the colour returning to his cheeks. 'Have you been out of the country just recently?'

Martha grinned at the Doctor. 'Well out of it.'

'That could explain it then.' said Victor, reaching under the bundle of guns and pulling out a folded newspaper. 'Though I'd have thought the whole world had heard of the Beast of Westmorland . . .'

Martha took the paper and checked the date. 'September 16th nineteen-oh-nine,' she read aloud, with a pointed look at the Doctor.

'Only a year and a few thousand miles out.' he protested. 'Anyway, the car's from Russelsheim and that's in Germany . . .'

But then Martha's frown deepened as she saw the headline. 'Beast of Westmorland Found Dead.' she read. 'Battered Prehistoric Killer Washed Up on Lakefront. Experts Baffled.'

'So you can read as well as nurse!' said Victor, apparently genuinely impressed.

Martha shot him a look. 'And if I couldn't, there's always this artist's impression.' She frowned at the smear of blotchy ink. 'Looks like . . . a dinosaur or something.'

'Let me see.' The Doctor snatched the paper from her hands.

'So why all the artillery?' asked Martha. 'Taking this lot along to hunt a dead monster seems a bit like overkill.'

'Friend of mine is the expert naturalist brought in to study the brute – Lord Haleston. He says there's serious injury to its head.' Victor tapped the side of his large nose. 'Thinks perhaps it had a tussle with a mate.'

'Mate?' Martha looked round nervously at the quiet, beautiful scenery. 'Then there's another thing like that roaming about?'

'There have been one or two sightings,' Victor confirmed. 'Could be just rumours, of course, or hysteria. The police have searched, and the army, too – after the massacre at that village last week they pulled out all the stops. No luck finding anything, but then it's such a wide area to cover . . .'

'Oh, no. No, no, no.' The Doctor had been studying the paper, stony-faced and he'd identified the beast. It was a Skarasen, a massive creature used by Zygons as a source of lactic fluid, a vital food source.

Skarasen were large enough to crush a human with one clawed foot. They were cybernetically altered to suit the Zygons' purposes and were vulnerable to no force short of a nuclear weapon.

The Doctor slung the paper in the back of the car. 'Victor, can you give us a lift?'

'The crash has done for the engine, I'm afraid.' Victor sighed. 'Dashed if I can get her to work.'

The Doctor produced his sonic screwdriver, lifted the mangled bonnet and stuck it inside. Then he turned the crank handle and the engine roared into life at once.

Victor stared in baffled delight. 'How'd you do that, then?'

'I want to see this dead monster,' said the Doctor, as if this was explanation enough. 'The paper doesn't say where it is.'

'Naturally. Don't want a circus . . .'

'Do you know?'

'As it happens, yes,' Victor admitted. 'The Beast's pegged out beside the lake at Templewell. We can detour on the way to Goldspur, though I'm not sure I can guarantee you access, old buck. Bit of a closed shop up there, and old Haleston –'

'What's Goldspur?' Martha queried, raising her voice over the engine's sputter.

'Lord Haleston's estate, base of operations for the hunting party,' Victor explained. 'But, wait just a moment! A lady travelling without a trunk? Never thought I'd see the day. Where's your luggage? How'd you pitch up here, in any case?'

'We had a bit of an accident ourselves,' said the Doctor.

'Several,' Martha put in. 'We lost everything and we've been walking all day.'

'Then a lift you shall have,' Victor declared. 'One good turn deserves another, what?' He headed for the driver's seat, but the Doctor was already sat there with an innocent smile.

'I wouldn't dream of making you drive with a bad hand,' the Doctor informed him. 'You ready, then? Come on, stop dawdling!'

Martha allowed Victor to help her climb up beside the Doctor. 'I take it we're joining this monster hunt?' she asked.

The Doctor's fingers drummed on the wheel as Victor clambered into the back. 'I have to be certain what that creature is,' he said ominously.

'I'd like to be certain you can drive this thing,' she said. 'How did the sonic screwdriver get it started in two seconds flat?'

The gleam returned to his eyes as he replied. 'My sonic dealer was giving away a Vintage Earth Engines software bundle free with every Sanctuary Base upgrade.'

As ever, Martha wasn't quite sure if he was talking rubbish or not. And, as ever, that was all part of the fun.

The Doctor pulled on a lever beside him and stepped on the accelerator pedal, and with a lurch the Opel roared away down the muddy track. No one noticed the hunched, orange creature hidden in the gorse on the hillside, breathing hoarsely, watching them go with dark, glittering eyes.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10  
**

Martha felt as though they were in an Agatha Christie novel set in 1909, which had been gate crashed by Mulder and Scully, looking for agents "K" and "J" who were chasing shape shifting aliens. It wasn't so much Professor Plum, in the conservatory, with the lead piping; more like shape shifting aliens, in the village of Kelmore, with a gigantic lizard, cow . . . thing.

The Doctor on the other hand, was reminded of Loch Ness in 1975, when he was in his fourth body and travelling with Sarah Jane. They had been at Loch Ness, where the monster was in fact a Skarasen, and the Zygons were planning to take over the Earth (as usual). Happy days.

When he thought of Sarah Jane, he remembered how, after a dodgy start, she and Rose had become firm friends. He should have told Rose about his other companions before then, but the subject never seemed to come up. She had him in fits of laughter though, when one evening on the sofa she told him how she and Sarah Jane had tried to trump each other by comparing monsters they'd met.

It was early morning on the shore of Lake Kelmore at Templewell, where the Doctor had freed the Skaresen from the Zygons' control by running the engines of all the construction equipment that had originally been used to imprison it.

'There's a subterranean channel leading out into the Irish Sea. The Skarasen will find its way to freedom. That's lovely. Isn't that lovely?' the Doctor said, glancing over at the digger and the 'dozer, whose engines were still rumbling away. 'But that racket's ruining what ought to be a very promising morning.'

Ian Lunn was a bright faced young boy, and his eyes lit up with enthusiasm. 'I'll turn them off,' he said happily running to oblige. Ian had been incredibly brave in helping Martha defeat the Zygons.

'I've already switched off the Opel's engine,' said Victor sadly. 'What's left of it. I hadn't realised you –' The Doctor and Martha had been attacked in the car by Zygon Warlord Brelarn, who had taken the form of an English Mastiff called Teazel. He'd lost control of the car and side swiped a tree.

'Sorry, Victor.' Martha was pointing, her face grave. Everyone looked. With the Skarasens gone, they could see straight across to where Victor's car lay smashed against the tree.

Zygon Analyst Taro was crawling past the wreck of the motor car, forcing herself up the hillside. 'Thought I'd killed the thing,' said Romand coldly. 'With the same pistol they were ready to turn on the King.'

Claude Romand was a French journalist for News of the Globe in Paris, who had been despatched with a new fangled Pathe film camera to produce a news reel for the cinemas.

'Wait here.' said the Doctor, striding off purposefully towards the injured Zygon. 'All of you. I'll be back.'

'Doctor!' Martha called, but he didn't look round.

'Shall we go after him?' Victor wondered.

'No.' Martha shook her head a fraction. 'Give him a minute.'

Taro wasn't moving fast, she couldn't. The Doctor soon caught up with her. He could see she was bleeding from her side. As he approached, she hissed, tried to crawl a little faster.

He stood a few metres away from her. 'Is that wound serious?'

She lay still, panting for breath. 'You will kill me before I can die from it.'

'Will I?' He walked over and sat beside her, just out of reach. 'Why would I do that, then?'

'Why would you not?'

'Because you're not all the same. And because I know you've lost just about everything.' The Doctor looked towards Martha and the others, back in the valley, and sighed. He'd lost his home, his people, his family . . . his Rose. 'I hope none of them ever find out what that feels like.'

The distant drone of the machinery died. An eerie silence settled over the valley.

Taro's brows were knitted together in a fierce frown. 'I do not seek your pity, Doctor.'

'That's good, 'cause I've got none to give,' the Doctor retorted. 'Just a proposition to put to you. Go back to your ship, summon your surviving crew, wherever they might be, and rejoin the children. I checked your relays; you've got enough power left for a single trip. Leave here, hide yourselves and return to the amber sleep.'

'To await a rescue that may never come?' Taro hissed weakly. "Amber sleep" was a form of suspended animation that the Zygons used on long journeys or in emergencies.

He came closer. 'It's the best I can do.'

Taro grabbed his hand in hers. 'Your body is weakened by my venom,' she croaked. 'A further sting . . .' she looked up at him. 'I could kill you.'

'And then my friends would kill you,' he said evenly, not resisting. 'Your crewmates would starve to death, and your children would have no one.' He looked her in the eyes. 'I won't give you a second chance, Taro.'

Slowly, with a wheezing breath, she let go of his hand and turned away. The Doctor sat beside her in silence as the minutes passed, as the sun sauntered slowly through the sky towards the horizon. There had been too many deaths these last few days; he hoped that Taro, as a mother, would choose life for her family and her friends . . .

Later that afternoon, from the field beside the TARDIS, Martha surveyed the majestic sunset. The red sun sat low in the sky, reducing the rugged landscape to a series of sharp black shadows. And a dark, spidery spaceship was whizzing by high overhead, the whine of its drive systems devastating the silence.

She looked round at the select audience who'd gathered here besides her and the Doctor – Victor, Romand, Ian and Lord Haleston. They held their hands over their ears, staring as the ship slowly dwindled into the pink sky.

'No more Zygons, then,' she murmured. They're really leaving.'

'Somewhere nice and remote,' the Doctor agreed. 'North Pole? Or the South Pole. Somewhere polar, anyway.'

'We should have killed the lot of them,' said Lord Haleston darkly. The Doctor sighed. 'That's right, your lordship, end the day with a smile.'

'I certainly shall,' Ian informed them. 'Nanny Flock has taken to her bed. Nerves and bruises, Dr Fenchurch says. He's given her a tonic.'

He grinned nastily. 'And I've swapped it for cod liver oil.' His nanny was a stern woman who didn't tolerate his adventurous spirit. She delighted in feeding him cod liver oil as a punishment.

Romand laughed. 'A taste of her own medicine, yes?'

Haleston cleared his throat. 'A little respect and decorum, if you please, gentlemen.'

'You won't tell Mother and Father, will you, sir?' Ian asked, wide eyed.

'I should hate to set back their recovery.'

'He'll be far too busy helping out with the recovery of my motor car,' said Victor, smiling at Haleston. 'Won't you, old buck?'

'Yes, sorry about your car,' said Martha. 'You're insured though, yeah?'

He looked at her blankly. 'Insured?'

The Doctor lowered his voice. 'No proper car insurance till the 1930s.'

'Ah,' said Martha. 'Unlucky.'

'On the contrary,' said Victor. 'After living through all that has happened here, I feel as lucky a man as the King, himself.'

'As do we all,' Haleston suggested, 'for playing our small part in protecting the life of the monarch.'

'Long live King Edward,' cried Ian, and Martha joined in the chorus of agreement.

The Doctor nodded. 'Though why he was named after a potato will always be a mystery to me.'

Haleston's face darkened, and Martha hid her smile by turning towards the TARDIS. She thought of all the people who'd be coming home just as they were leaving. Little Molly, reunited with her family. Ian's parents back together with Teazel. The real Mrs Unswick, taking back ownership of her Lodge. And poor Clara, who'd be visiting her parents' church for a final time.

Martha was still wearing the girl's cardigan. She wanted to bring it out into the stars with her; a little piece of the girl she'd never known, that would fly forever.

'I take it,' said Lord Haleston, his grave voice interrupting her thoughts, 'that you have some luggage stowed away in this extraordinary object?'

'Lots,' Martha agreed. 'We'll just go and get it.'

Romand took her hand and kissed it. 'And then, my dear, it will be my privilege to run you to the station in my motor car, yes?'

'If my own car wasn't in pieces, I'd offer the same service myself,' said Victor, pressing a kiss against her other hand.

Martha smiled at them both. 'And if I was going to the station, boys, I'd take you up on it.'

Ian looked puzzled. 'Then, how are you getting home?'

Martha smiled round at them all one last time, as the Doctor unlocked the TARDIS door and slipped inside.

'Don't let appearances deceive you,' she said, giving Ian's hand a fond squeeze. 'This is our home.'

Ian watched her follow the Doctor into the strange-looking police box and close the door. Victor and Romand frowned at each other, and Lord Haleston started to mutter something about inappropriate behaviour under his breath.

'How's your throat?' Martha asked from the other side of the console. The Doctor's neck was red and swollen where he had been stung by Taro as he'd tried to stop her from repairing the cybernetic implant in the Skaresen's brain.

'Feels like I've swallowed a cactus,' he said with a smile as he rubbed his throat.

'Come through to the Medi-bay and I'll have a look at it for you.'

'Nah, its all right thanks,' he said dismissively as he started up the Time Rotor.

'Oi! I might not be a doctor yet, but I am a third year medical student,' said Martha sternly. 'And you've been keeping me from my clinical studies. So come through to the Medi-bay. I need the practice,' she said with a tone of voice that she used on the drunks on a Saturday night shift.

The Doctor's defiant stare softened and turned into a smile. 'Okay, Third Year Medical Student Jones.'

He allowed himself to be herded into the Medi-bay, where she applied a soothing balm to his neck. She shone a light into his mouth, using a tongue depressor to look at his tonsils while he said "aahhh".

She felt the glands in his neck, and listened to his chest with a stethoscope. She smiled to herself as she heard his two hearts lub-lub-dub-dubing away in his chest. She took the stethoscope out of her ears and straightened up.

'Well, what's the verdict?' he asked her.

'Diagnosis,' she corrected him. 'A doctor gives a diagnosis. A judge gives a verdict.'

'Actually, it's the jury that hands down the verdict. The judge renders a judgement of conviction before sentencing,' said the Doctor with a smug smile.

Martha didn't rise to the bait. She's treated plenty of awkward patients at the Royal Hope on a Saturday night. 'The skin on your neck is inflamed, but the glands aren't swollen. Your airway isn't restricted and you have equal air entry to both lungs.'

The Doctor gave her a genuinely impressed smile before she concluded. 'Oh, and as far as I can tell, both your hearts are beating normally. In conclusion, you'll live, which is more than can be said for me if I don't get some sleep.'

'Thank you Third Year Medical Student Jones, and as THE Doctor, I prescribe a good nights sleep for you. See you in the morning.'

* * *

The next morning, Martha entered the console room, dressed in a black lace top, purple skirt, brown boots; and a light purple head band to keep her hair back. The Doctor had changed back into his brown pinstriped suit, but instead of a shirt and tie, he'd gone for a denim shirt with a white T-shirt underneath.

He was frowning in concentration at the monitor, as she approached.

'Found something interesting?' she asked, as she stood by his side and looked at the unintelligible symbols on the screen.

'Mmmm, yeah, I think I've found our next adventure.'

'Really?' she said, a bit apprehensive about him trying to get them killed again.

'Yeah, a collapsing star is in the first stages of forming a black hole, which happens all the time . . . what's interesting though is the shape of time and space around it are being distorted to form a Starman.'

'What's a Starman when it's a home?'

'A Starman, is a cosmic being with primitive consciousness. They travel through space and time on the energy they receive from eating stars, and sometimes, if you're unlucky, they migrate from their own time and go trampling through existence, wiping it clean and rewriting history, rewriting the laws of science itself.'

'Okay, not good then?' she said.

He straightened up from the console. 'Come through to the Library, I'll show you a published paper on them.' He walked towards the corridor. 'My people used to watch out for them and keep them in check.'

'So who does it now?' she asked in concern.

He looked over at her and smiled. 'You're looking at him.'

In the Library, the Doctor perused the shelves, searching for a particular publication.

'Ah, here we are,' he announced, and pulled out a thin, hard backed book. He handed it to Martha, and they sat on the comfy sofa.

'Starmen. The genesis, aetiology and morphology of a trans-dimensional, polymorphic entity,' she read out loud. 'A treatise by Arkytior. Seventh year student, Prydonian Academy.' She looked up at the Doctor with a questioning look.

'Don't worry; the title is worse than its contents. It's a student paper from the Academy on Gallifrey, it's very readable and informative.'

'O-kay,' she said uncertainly. 'I'll give it a go.'

Thanks to all the studying that she had been doing recently to become a doctor, she was able to read and retain information really quickly, and by the time she'd finished reading the paper, she was quite the expert on the Starmen.

'Fascinating,' she said, putting the book on the low table in front of her. 'How are you going to stop it?'

'Well, when it appeared as two giant humanoids on Karkinos, I used a device that had the power of a collapsed star in it. It was made by a very clever, and not very nice, character called the Exalted Holgoroth of All Tagkhanastria.'

'That's alright then,' she said, relieved that he had a method of stopping this very dangerous threat.

'Ah, but then there was a larger Starman, created by ripples from the Karkinos Starman. That one migrated to ancient Babylon, where it appeared as a kind of giant goat-fish. I lost the orb of the Exalted Holgoroth of All Tagkhanastria when I fought that one,' he told her.

'Giant goat-fish?'

'Yeah, it had no back legs, just the tail of a rotten fish, huge and bloated, and it pulled itself along with two immense lizard-like arms. Its head had dangling fleshy tendrils and two horny protuberances jutting from the top,' he told her, a distant look in his eyes as her remembered.

'It had the same dead, distant eyes as the twin giants, and the same faint appearance as if it was there but somehow not there at the same time. The strangest thing of all was what looked like water gushing from its shoulders, giving the appearance of two long, drooping silver wings.'

'Blimey, they really can take on any appearance then. Do you know what this next one is going to look like . . . ?'

He opened his mouth to answer, but she interrupted him. 'Oh, and where and when its going to appear . . . ?' He went to answer again. 'Oh, and how we're going to beat it?'

He smiled at her, she'd said 'how are WE going to beat it', she was part of the TARDIS team for sure. 'Let's go back to the console, and I can scan the forming Starman.'

At the console, the Doctor scanned the collapsing star, and the forming trans-dimensional being. He tracked it forwards in time, predicting its migration, and calculating the point where it would appear.

'Ooh, that's new,' he said. 'Not seen that configuration before.'

'What is it, is something wrong?' Martha asked.

'No, not really, unless you call four eggs wrong? Well, four pod like things containing body parts wrong. Well, four things containing a head, chest, abdomen, and tail, that will form a giant lizard when they hatch and fuse together, wrong.'

'Yeah, that sounds very wrong. You'd better fill me in on the details . . . and where did you say it was migrating to?'

'Er, I didn't . . . it's your hometown . . . London.'


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

The Doctor walked into the console room carrying an ancient looking bow, and a quiver of arrows.

'What the hell are you going to do with those?' Martha asked him, raising an enquiring eyebrow. 'I didn't think you killed things.'

He gave her a puzzled frown, and then realised what she was talking about. 'Oh, these . . . no, these aren't to kill anything.'

He took an arrow out of the quiver, and showed her the tip, which looked like the sort of tracking beacon that she'd seen used on whales and sharks on those wildlife documentaries on TV.

'Single shot Vortex manipulator; I've set them for quiet little planets out in the sticks. Once it's deployed, 'pop', it transports the body part to a different time and location, preventing the Starman from fully forming, and everyone can live happily ever after.' he finished.

Martha smiled at him. 'Brilliant! I've looked at the map, and I know where we've got to go, so what are we waiting for?'

He switched on his manic smile. 'Allonz-y,' he said, and they ran down the ramp to the doors.

The Doctor landed the TARDIS on Hampstead Heath, in the vain hope that the Starman would materialise there where it could be more easily dealt with.

No such luck! as the time to the pending migration got closer, so did the accuracy of the predictive scan, and it now appeared it was going to be near or in Hampstead Underground Station.

'We need a taxi to get there in time,' Martha told him, and he wasn't going to argue, this was her town, and he deferred to her greater knowledge. She flagged down a black taxi, and the driver gave them a suspicious look, what with the Doctor having a long bow over his back, and Martha carrying a quiver of arrows.

'Wimbledon Archery Club,' he said with a smile. 'Competition day today . . . bit of a grudge match with the Hampstead club, what with them thinking they're superior, with all that heath to shoot in.'

Martha stood in front of him and rolled her eyes. 'Take no notice; he's just having a laugh.'

They climbed into the taxi, and the driver set off for their destination, a short drive away. The taxi pulled up in Heath Street, a quiet, shop filled street that had a gentle incline. Martha paid the taxi fare, and they climbed out onto the street. The Doctor looked up the street, but Martha directed him down, towards the station, where the Starman migration would occur.

'Doctor . . . ? Doctor! Doctor!' A young, blonde woman ran out of a shop behind them.

'Hello. Sorry, bit of a rush . . . there's a sort of thing happening . . . fairly important we stop it,' he said pointing down the street where Martha was waiting impatiently.

'My God, it's you . . . It really is you . . . Oh, you don't remember me, do you?'

Martha walked back towards him. 'Doctor, we haven't got time for this, the migration's started.'

'Look, sorry, I've got a bit of a complex life. Things don't always happen to me in quite the right order. Gets a bit confusing at times, especially at weddings. I'm rubbish at weddings . . . especially my own,' he rambled on.

'Oh, my God, of course,' she said in realisation. 'You're a time traveller. It hasn't happened to you yet. None of it. It's still in your future.'

'What hasn't happened?' Suddenly, he knew there was something important about this woman, something that would affect his future, or his past, or both.

'Doctor, please, twenty minutes to red hatching,' Martha called to him. He had colour coded the eggs in order of seriousness, green was the tail hatching, which wasn't too much of a problem. The amber hatching was the lower torso, which the tail would attach to.

Next would be the red hatching, the upper torso, which would create a headless, terrible lizard, a dino-saur. The fourth and final hatching would be the head of the Starman, and Martha was a bit puzzled by the Doctor's choice of colour; mauve, wasn't it red for danger?

'It was me. Oh, for God's sake, it was me all along. You got it all from me,' she realised, as though a final part of a jigsaw had fallen into place.

'Got what?' he asked.

'Okay, listen,' she said, taking a deep breath. 'One day you're going to get stuck in 1969. Make sure you've got this with you.' She handed him a purple, plastic folder with paperwork inside. 'You're going to need it.'

'Doctor!' Martha shouted this time.

'Yeah, listen, listen, got to dash . . . Things happening . . . well, four things . . . well, four things and a lizard.'

'Okay . . . No worries. On you go. See you around some day.'

He sets off down the street, but then turns one final time. 'What was your name?'

'Sally Sparrow.'

'Good to meet you, Sally Sparrow.'

An unshaven man walks down the street towards her, carrying a plastic carton of milk, and looking as though he's seen a ghost. Sally looks up at him, smiles, and holds his hand.

'Goodbye, Doctor.' They turn around and walk into the book and DVD shop. He watched them with a bemused look on his face; it was funny how sometimes things happened out of sequence.

Talking of things happening, he remembered why they had come to this street, and turned to run after Martha.

'Who was that then?' she asked him when he fell in step beside her. 'And what was that folder she gave you?'

'Absolutely no idea! A bit like Queen Liz . . . back there with Shakespeare.' He put the folder in his 'larger on the inside' coat pocket. 'But whatever's in this folder sounds very important.'

'Aren't you going to look then?' she asked, as she turned the corner, grabbing his elbow to pull him to follow her into the purple bricked Hampstead Station.

'When the time's right,' is all he would say. 'Right then, so where's the tail and lower torso?'

He took out his sonic screwdriver and started scanning the concourse, grinning manically at commuters who were giving them weird looks, while Martha just smiled weakly and apologetically.

'Where is it then?' she whispered, smiling at a man in a smart suit, and carrying a briefcase.

The Doctor looked at the blue, holographic projection of the scan results that hovered above the end of his sonic device. 'Oh, no, no, no, no . . . we're at the entrance to an underground rail system, where's the worst place it could appear?'

Martha looked down at the floor, and then at the Doctor.

'Yep,' he said in resignation, and they headed for the stairway that led down to the lower levels. The Doctor was remembering his second incarnation, when he went down into Covent Garden Station and encountered the robotic Yeti, controlled by the Great Intelligence, what a hoot that had been.

There were people passing them, heading for the entrance, so he presumed that a train had just been and gone, that would mean that the platform would be empty while they located the parts of the Starman.

One hundred and ninety two feet below Hampstead, they walked along the purple and white tiled passages, until they came to a platform that had the name 'Heath Street' in mosaic on the curved wall. The Doctor turned right and followed his sonic to the end of the platform. "Please don't let it be in the tunnels" he thought to himself, and breathed a sigh of relief when the readings indicated a metal service door in the wall.

He tried the handle, and of course, the door was locked, being for "staff only". A quick change of setting on the sonic, the lock clicked open, and he popped his head inside. By the light of the sonic, he could see an old style, metal light switch on the end of metal cable conduit. He flicked the switch, and a row of lights on the ceiling, in safety cages threw a dim light into the passageway.

He stepped into the passageway, and Martha followed, closing the door behind her. He put the sonic in his pocket, and took the longbow off his back.

'This is it then,' he said, taking one of the arrows out of the quiver. 'Stay alert, and get ready to keep me supplied with arrows.'

'Is it dangerous then, if it's still incomplete?' she asked him, searching the shadows ahead.

'Each body part can act independently. The tail can act like a whip, or like a python, and the hind legs on the lower torso have some nasty claws that can disembowel you. When the two parts converge, you've got a vicious alien to deal with.'

'Right, sorry I asked.'

They started moving down the passageway, the Doctor leading the way, with an arrow nocked and ready to shoot; Martha was at his elbow, looking past him. In the distance, she could make out a dark shape, which was roughly the size of a wardrobe lying on its side. He approached slowly, and gently tapped it with his foot, drawing the bow back, ready to shoot. The organic looking wardrobe rocked easily, and he realised it was empty; this was the tail or lower torso that had already hatched.

'Hmmm, I wonder where that's gone?' he asked out loud.

Martha didn't answer; instead, he heard a muffled gurgling noise and turned around to look at her. She was laying on the floor, with a massive snake wrapped around her body, the thin, tail end around her neck, strangling her.

'Martha!' He quickly put the bow down, and knelt beside her, trying to wrap the end of the snake like tail around his arm. Martha gave a weak gasp; her ribs were being crushed by the muscular coils around her body. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the sonic screwdriver, adjusting the setting and pushing it hard against the hard, scaly skin of the disembodied tail.

The pulse from the sonic caused the muscular tail to spasm, and like a spring, the coiled tail released its energy by straightening out, throwing Martha in one direction, and knocking the Doctor in another. He landed on his back, with the heavy tail pinning him to the floor. He wrapped his arms and legs around it, trying to prevent it from coiling around him when it recovered.

Martha was on her hands and knees, coughing and gasping, rubbing her neck with one hand, when she saw the Doctor struggling with the snake-tail. She scrambled forwards, picking up the bow and arrow and aiming it in his direction.

'MARTHA, NO!' he shouted, if the arrow hit the tail, it would jump into another time and place, and take him with it, but it was too late. In slow motion, he saw the arrow fly towards him, and then . . . past him, over his head, and into the bipedal torso of the second part of the Starman that was standing over him, sharp talons ready to strike.

The passageway was filled with a blue light, as the torso vanished into the Vortex. The Doctor let go of the tail, and kicked it against the wall opposite with as much force as he could muster. Martha grabbed another arrow, put it in the bow as quickly as she could, and shot. There was another flash of blue light, as the tail followed the torso into the Vortex.

He turned to look at her and laughed. 'Hah, where did you learn to shoot a bow and arrow?'

'Wimbledon Archery Club,' she laughed. 'No, we had Nerf bow and arrows when we were kids, y'know, they fire foam arrows. Tish and Leo never stood a chance against me.'

'Well, I for one am glad they didn't.' He got to his feet and helped her up. 'Come on, let's find the other two parts, and send them off somewhere else.'

Further down the passageway, they found the second 'egg case' that the lower torso had hatched from. They continued on and saw another of the 'eggs'. This one definitely still had the body part in it, because they could hear it breaking out. The Doctor shot an arrow, and a blue flash told them that it had been dispatched into the Vortex.

'Just one more to go,' he said with a smile. 'I think you should have the honour.' He handed over the bow, and took the quiver from her.

They moved ahead several metres, and saw the last of the eggs. The Doctor scanned it to make sure that the body part was still inside, and nodded to Martha. 'It's the head . . . all yours.'

The bow creaked as she drew back the string, a satisfying 'thrum', whistle, and thud as she released the arrow, and a blue flash of light as the last part of the multi-dimensional entity disappeared into the Vortex.

'Yes!' he said, pumping the air, and pulling her into a hug. 'Good shot Marion, Sherwood is once again safe from the Sheriff of Nottingham, time for a cup of tea.'

Laughing, they walked arm in arm, back to the platform, and on up to the street, where they caught the 603 to Hampstead Heath. After a short walk across the Heath, they reached the TARDIS and let themselves in.

'I'll put the kettle on,' Martha said as the Doctor threw his coat over the coral strut and moved towards the console monitor.

'Ooh, lovely idea.'

When she returned a few minutes later with mugs in hand, she found him on the jump seat with his feet up on the console, arms crossed, frowning at the monitor. He looked up at her and smiled as he accepted the beverage.

'Here's one for you. School history lesson, who was the first man to reach the North Pole?' he asked her out of the blue.

'Blimey, I don't know. Wasn't it Amundsen?' she said, sipping her tea.

'Amundsen? Y'know it comes to something when an alien has to tell a native about the history of their own planet. Roald Amundsen went to the South Pole ahead of Robert Scott. Penguins, not Polar bears.'

'Penguins?' she said in confusion. Sometimes it was difficult to keep up with his trains of thought.

'Penguins in the south, Polar bears in the north. Anyway, it was either Frederick Cook, accompanied by two Inuit men called Ahwelah and Etukishook, on April 21, 1908; or it was Robert Edwin Peary and his employee Matthew Henson and four Inuit men called Ootah, Seegloo, Egingway, and Ooqueah on April 6, 1909.'

'Hang on,' Martha started. 'That's two men and two different years.'

'Yeah, their claims are disputed, and I did say "was". It now appears it was the son of a French baker called Pierre Bruyère. And if that's not weird enough, it appears he did it in 1890 in a hydrogen balloon. And, for the icing on the weirdness cake, he had two associates with him, two doctors apparently . . . and unusually for that time, one of them was a woman.'

Martha raised her eyebrows in surprise, and then saw the look in his eyes. 'You don't think . . .'

'Doctor Jones, would you like to accompany me to the 1890 International Geographical Congress in London, where Bruyère declares his intention to fly to the North Pole?'

'That sounds like an invitation to a date with destiny. How could I refuse?'


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

'Do you feel that?' said the Doctor. 'Do you feel what's happening?' And Martha could see what he meant; the rate of descent of the hydrogen balloon had slowed. 'It wants us to get rid of our food.'

'The only force here is gravity,' Pierre Bruyère said with scorn.

'Not that force. The force that's keeping us aloft. We should have crashed on the ice already.'

The bottom of the basket hit a spike of ice, chipping snow over them all. The force knocked them off their feet, the balloon bounced upwards off the impact. 'Next time we'll tip over,' said the Doctor. 'We've no choice.' And they took the remaining hampers, all three of them, and heaved them away.

In that instant the balloon stopped struggling. As if they'd just flicked a switch and turned the crisis off. Oh, the balloon seemed to say, you want me to go up? Nothing to it! And with a nonchalance that almost made Martha laugh, calmly, lazily, it began to rise once more into the air.

They gained height quickly – Martha watched all the provisions dwindle to the size of ants against the snow, then disappear completely.

'We're alive,' she said. It was obvious. But it needed to be said.

'Whatever this thing is,' said the Doctor, 'it wants us entirely at its mercy.' He stared at the polar wastes ahead of them.

One day Pierre looked up from his sextant, cleared his throat formally, and announced that he thought they must nearly be there. 'Below us, gentlemen, is the North Pole.'

Martha couldn't help herself, she looked over the side of the basket. It was a pointless thing to do, and she knew it was pointless. Nothing but white below them, white above them, nothing but white all around. Nothing but white for weeks.

'What do you think, Doctor?' asked Pierre. But the Doctor hadn't spoken for a long time. At first the Doctor had been characteristically exuberant.

'We have to stay alive,' he told them, 'that's what matters. Gather everything which we can throw overboard, just in case we need ballast again.' Martha even thought he was enjoying himself as he arranged the heaviest items around the perimeter for easy access. Sledges, scientific instruments. 'We've got to be prepared to junk the lot,' said the Doctor.

He took hold of Pierre's journal, but the explorer snatched it back. 'Not that,' said Pierre, and for a moment it looked as if the Doctor would argue, but then he nodded, let go. 'No,' he agreed. 'All right. Not that.'

They made sure they kept warm, and took regular turns to sleep and keep watch. Not that there was anything to watch. After a few hours Martha found the stark blankness all around her almost blinding. There was no food, of course, and the Doctor told them they'd have to cope as best they could.

That day Martha hadn't felt hungry anyway, she supposed she was too scared. And after a couple more days she stopped questioning it, and by the end of that first week she'd even forgotten she should be hungry.

Once in a while her thoughts would drift, and she'd wonder about it – wasn't there something she should be doing with food, she'd think dreamily, shouldn't she be eating it, something like that – then with a jolt she'd realise she should be starving. No, really, literally starving. And then she'd feel dozy again, and the voice in her head would tell her not to worry about it.

OK, she'd tell the voice, and give in to sleep – I'm sure if anything were wrong, the Doctor would take care of it. Sometimes Martha's dreams would be peaceful. She wouldn't remember what they'd been when she woke up, but they'd been all hers and nobody else's. But more often than not they'd get interrupted by that woman examiner.

'Never mind that holiday in Bermuda,' she'd say, 'never mind that Christmas when you were seven, never mind that date with Leonardo DiCaprio. Tell me about the bones, Martha. It's so very cold, I must feast. Tell me all about the bones, and why you love them so much.'

When they'd run out of songs, the crew began to share dreams. Martha told the Doctor and Pierre how she had always wanted to study medicine. And Pierre told them his dreams of white.

The Doctor hadn't paid much attention to anything in weeks, Martha had been getting very worried – but at this he showed a sudden interest. 'Nothing but white, really?'

'But out here,' said Pierre, 'amongst the white . . . sometimes I now dream of other things.'

'What other things?'

'Just other things,' Pierre would shrug. 'Just not white. As if I've been set free. It's a relief.'

Pierre wouldn't say much any more either, he liked to sleep as long as possible. He'd do so with a grin across his face, and look so at peace that Martha would feel envious. And when he was awake he'd be scribbling in his journal.

Martha couldn't see why. Nothing was happening for him to write about. But he'd write anyway, one arm hiding it from view, as if he didn't want anyone to copy his homework.

'What do you dream of, Doctor?' asked Martha.

'I don't dream,' he said shortly.

But one time, when Pierre was asleep, he told Martha. 'On old maps you'll find the words "Here Be Dragons". It doesn't mean there really were dragons, of course. Only that there were places no one had ever been. They didn't know what they'd find, there could be anything. Explorers like Pierre, they don't think that's good enough. They keep pushing against the limits of what they know, they refuse ever to sit back and say, that's enough. They won't give in to the dragons. But,' he said, 'what if, when you get out there, into the unknown . . . you find there are dragons waiting after all?'

One day Pierre looked up from his sextant, and said that they must nearly be there. 'Below us, gentlemen, is the North Pole. What do you think, Doctor?' But the Doctor just looked at him grimly.

'How can you tell?' asked Martha. 'We can't even see land.'

'We've been travelling at a steady rate of twenty knots these past two months. Always on the same course, the winds have been constant.'

'Wait a moment,' said Martha. 'These past months? How long do you think we've been travelling for?'

Pierre frowned. 'Four, maybe five months. What's your estimate?'

Martha felt like laughing. 'That's ridiculous. It can't be more than a fortnight.'

'What do you think, Doctor?' asked Pierre again.

Martha looked at her old friend. 'Yes, Doctor, how long have we been doing this?'

The Doctor licked his lips. Spoke quietly. 'It's been years. Years and years, I lost count. So many . . . I've tried to shield you from the worst of it, took so much concentration. I'm sorry.' His companions looked dumbly at him. 'Entire lifetimes, crouching here in a basket. And yet,' he said, and took out his sonic screwdriver.

Martha had never been so pleased to see something so safe, so familiar. The Doctor pointed it over the side of the balloon, aimed downwards. A blue light pierced through the white, it lost none of its intensity as it burned ever downwards, illuminating the way. And hundreds of feet below them . . . shapes to make out . . . yes! Martha could see the snow. And the ice. And the hampers of food they had jettisoned.

'And yet,' continued the Doctor, 'it's been no time at all.'

'They're not even frozen over,' said Pierre, hushed. 'They'd have frozen over in minutes.' He looked up at the

Doctor, and his face was suddenly livid, and Martha thought he might actually hit him. 'It's impossible! That's the North Pole below us! It has to be. And I shall write as much in my journal!'

'Your journal is nothing but lies.' But Pierre stomped over to the book anyway, sat down, and picked up his pen.

'What is it, Doctor?' asked Martha.

'It distorts time,' said the Doctor. 'Running the same seconds back over and over. We're literally frozen in them. The perfect larder. Where the meat stays fresh and never runs out.'

Pierre couldn't speak. He tried, but the words just didn't come out, his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. So he had to pass his journal to the Doctor dumbly. The Doctor looked inside. All the pages were filled. They'd been filled many times over, one diary entry over another over another, until all the words were illegible, a mess of black ink.

'I don't think this is your first expedition to the North Pole,' said the Doctor. He handed the journal back to Pierre, who dropped it listlessly to the floor. 'Let's find out.' He raised the sonic screwdriver high and, as he pushed down just once, there was the smallest of beeps – and the giant gas balloon above them popped open.

There was a whoosh of hydrogen into the arctic sky, so dense that Martha could actually see it, and then the silk covers that had kept them afloat fell away and were lost in the white. Martha steeled herself for the fall, the inevitable crash upon the ice below – but, ridiculously, they just hung there in mid-air. She looked down, but the ground just sat there, out of reach, stubbornly refusing to obey the laws of physics. And then she looked up.

She'd not been able to look upwards for so long. The balloon had been her sky, it had blocked out everything else above them. And now she could do nothing but gawp. The Doctor and Pierre were already doing the same. They were not alone.

Balloons.

At first Martha thought there was a dozen of them, and that was impossible enough – but then she saw there was a layer above that, and the layers kept going on and on – there were hundreds of balloons, maybe thousands, a whole flotilla of them blotting out the sky. And that wasn't the strangest thing of all.

'They're my balloon,' said Pierre. 'The same insignia, the same design . . .' And there he stopped, because he didn't dare carry on, he knew if he said it aloud his mind might crack – but the same Pierre too, standing at the edge of each basket, flanked always by two different crewmembers.

'What did I do?' he heard himself ask.

'What's been done to you,' corrected the Doctor. 'It's caught you in a loop. Each time you set out with companions, and each time it sends you back to the beginning for new ones. The same polar expedition over and over, always doomed to failure.'

'But why?' asked Martha. 'What possible reason could it have to do that?'

'All it can do is eat,' said the Doctor. 'That's all. And so it's everything humanity isn't. Because you all have aspirations, desires, the urge to reach out and be something greater than you are. And that's what it feeds on. Human ambition. The very thing that makes you think or feel. It's obscene.' He turned to Pierre. 'It's reached into your very dreams, made you want to be an explorer, made you hunger to come here again and again.'

Pierre's face was an agony. 'Are you saying that all that desire I had to explore . . . to add to the sum of human knowledge . . . it wasn't even mine in the first place?'

The Doctor said nothing, because he had no answer to give. Pierre wobbled on his feet, he looked as if he might faint, he grabbed hold of the edge of the basket to steady himself. And then he gripped it harder, his knuckles flared, and he shouted out into the frozen wastes. 'I wanted to be somebody special . . .'

The ice bit at his face and made his eyes water. 'Come to me,' he said. 'Come to me right now, and tell me I'm not to my face.'

The Pierre Bruyère in the balloon above tilted its head in what looked like consideration. Then it shrugged. It sat itself upon the edge of the basket, and swinging its legs over the side, lowered itself down.

Soon it was hanging there only by his fingernails, some nine metres above the real Pierre Bruyère's head. It looked downwards, seemed to tut in irritation to see how far it still had to go. And then the fingernails grew, they stretched out like elastic, only it wasn't elastic, it was ice, they'd become ten long icicles and Pierre was dropping gently into the basket beside them.

'How much of me is really me?' one Pierre asked the other bravely. 'Could I ever have been a great man at all?'

His counterpart was speckled with frost like icing sugar, his hair frozen to his head, his teeth chattering, his eyes hard flint. 'I'm so cold,' this Pierre said, almost apologetically, and with something like tenderness brought his hands up to the other's cheeks, and drained the life out of him.

'My turn, I think,' said the Doctor. And the Pierre Bruyère monster turned away from the frozen corpse he had created. 'I've felt you buzzing away around my dreams. You want to know what's inside, don't you? You want to know my hopes and desires, where I've explored.' He stepped closer; the ice cold of Pierre's face didn't even change expression.

'I've navigated the North West Passage, stepped on the moon, been to Mars, Venus, planets you'll need three tongues to pronounce. I've sipped tea on the rim of burning constellations that were lost millennia ago. And I'm not done yet. I'm not done yet. So, if you want to feast, you'd better be hungry.'

And he didn't wait, he grabbed hold of Pierre's hands, drove them into his cheeks, and held tight. The white darkened. Turned red. Turned purple like a bruise. 'Can you feel it?' gasped the Doctor. 'All those dreams you'll never know. That you'll never understand.' And he cried out. 'Martha, I made a mistake. I thought I could weaken it, could fill it to bursting. But it's so cold, and it's so hungry.'

And Martha didn't hesitate, she put her own hands upon the Doctor's cheeks too. She felt how cold they were, and she was so warm against them, and she pushed harder until she could feel she'd reached the Doctor's warmth too, she knew it must be deep inside somewhere.

'And I've been to the moon too,' she spat in Pierre's face. 'I've not sipped tea at half so many constellations, but I've sipped at a good few. But that was never my dream. I'm not an explorer. I just wanted to put people back together again.'

There they stood, the Doctor and Martha, clasped together, embracing the monster. And with a dull crump, the sound of a footfall in heavy snow, time unfroze, flung backwards, and the wounded sky burst like a berry.

And one day Martha did visit the North Pole. 'We never did get there, did we?' asked the Doctor. 'What with everything else going on. Well, soon fix that!'

He set the controls, gave the pump a particularly vigorous workout, and a minute later he opened the doors. 'Bit parky out there,' he said. 'Won't stay for long.'

Martha stepped out into the snow. She hugged herself against the cold. She looked at the white, stretching out in all directions.

'It's just a place,' she said at last.

'Just a place,' the Doctor agreed. 'Sometimes the destination isn't half as interesting as the ambition to get there.' He pointed at where she'd left footprints. 'Look at that. It's 1890, give or take a year or two. You're the first person to have stood at the North Pole. Martha Jones, pioneer!'

She laughed.

'Come on,' he said. And before they left, he smeared away their prints carefully. 'Don't want to spoil it for anyone else. Let's go and get something to warm us up.'

He took the TARDIS to exactly the same place, a mere two hundred years later. The North Pole Experience was an interactive museum, with exhibits that the children could play with, and a gift shop filled with 'I've Been to the North Pole' T-shirts and clockwork penguins.

'Still don't have penguins in the Arctic,' said the Doctor.

He bought them both overpriced coffees in the café, found them a nice table in the observation lounge, and they looked out the plastic windows at what had been the most isolated place in the world.

And he told her what he dreamed. How, on his planet, the maps never said 'Here Be Dragons'. Because his people had explored the universe, they'd been everywhere and everywhen. At one moment there they'd been, charting the stars, and the next, it was all over. That was time travel for you.

When he'd been a child, the Doctor had wanted to be an explorer. But there was nowhere left to discover. They told him he shouldn't leave home, what was the point? But he'd found a point. He'd found a point. And whenever he forgot it, he'd close his eyes, he'd dream again, and there it would be.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

"Another day, another opportunity to explore," the Doctor thought to himself as Martha entered the control room. It was a shame humans had to sleep so much; because whilst he was on his own with no one to distract him, his thoughts always turned to a certain pink and yellow girl.

'Where would you like to go now? I can take you anywhere! Anywhere at all!' the Doctor said with a grin, poised over the controls, fingers itching to press the switches that would take her to the place she wanted to go.

Martha didn't know what to say, so she just said something off the top of her head. 'Let's go to the zoo.'

The Doctor looked at her as if she'd just kicked his puppy.

Then his expression relaxed and he just said, in his normal voice, 'Nah, gotta be somewhere better than that. I'm offering you anywhere in the universe!'

'Can I think about it?'

He nodded. 'Don't take too long, because we don't want to be wasting time when we could be having fun.'

She smiled at him and went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. When she returned into the control room later, the Doctor was sitting on the jump seat, reading some book with a picture of a rocket on the cover.

'Aha! Martha! Excellent!' he said. 'Decided yet?'

She shook her head. 'I didn't mean to upset you,' she said.

He blinked, pretend-baffled. 'You didn't upset me.'

'Yes, I did. But I didn't mean to. Just tell me, so I don't do it again, what's wrong with going to the zoo?'

He frowned at that, seeming to weigh up the options. Finally he simply said, 'just not really me.'

'Come on, I can tell it's more than that.'

The Doctor sighed and drew in a deep breath. 'OK. It . . . hurts. The thought of anything being caged hurts me.'

Martha perched on the edge of the jump seat. 'Oh, but there're plenty of places without cages these days. My these days, I mean, where I come from. They give the animals loads of freedom.'

'Cages don't always have bars, Martha,' he said. 'Just because you call something freedom, doesn't mean it is.' He looked at her, a bit pityingly. For a second she felt angry, patronised, and then something in his eyes suddenly made her understand.

'You couldn't live on only apples and Milky Ways,' she said, slowly. 'You might not starve, but it'd still be cruel.'

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. 'Hungry? I can offer you a thirty course banquet in Imperial Japan, a kronkburger on Reblais Beta, dehydrated protein tablets on a shuttle to Mars – or there's always chips, nice little chippie in south London . . .'

He reached forwards, angling for a feather lying on top of the huge central console, but his fingers only skimmed it. She jumped up to get it for him. It was just a feather, grey and white, nothing to look at twice.

'Seagull?' she asked.

'Bookmark,' he replied, slipping it in place and slamming his book shut with a ringing thud. 'Oh, right, see what you mean. No, dodo.'

Martha stared at him for a second. Sometimes the 'anywhere in time and space' bit took her by surprise in the most unexpected ways. Reblais Beta in the 150th century, fine, animal extinct for three hundred-odd years, her time, unbelievable.

'That's where I choose!' she said, suddenly excited. 'Please? To see a dodo! In its natural habitat,' she added hurriedly.

The Doctor seemed happy enough with her choice. 'Okey dokey, all aboard the good ship TARDIS for a trip to the island of Mauritius – let's say sometime in the sixteenth century, before human discovery, back when the dodo was as alive as . . . as a dodo.'

He was at the controls now, twiddling dials – then suddenly he nipped back over to the jump seat, picked up the book and opened it again, extracting the dodo feather. He looked hard at his place, said, 'Oh, I expect I'll remember where I was. Can't bear it when people turn over the page corners, just can't bear it,' shut the book again, and then was back at the console, inserting the feather into a little hole Martha could have sworn hadn't been there before.

The feather stuck out at a jaunty angle like it was on a Robin Hood hat, anomalous but still somehow completely at home among the alien technology.

'That,' said the Doctor, 'will tune us in. Land us right at their big scaly feet. Sort of automatic dodo detector.' He paused. 'Automatic dodo detector. I ought to patent that, next time we go somewhere with a . . . what d'you call it? Place where you patent things.'

'Patent office?' Martha offered.

'Good name, like it. You should trademark it. Next time we go somewhere with a . . . what d'you call it? Place where you trademark things.'

'I don't think there is an actual place –' Martha began, but the Doctor wasn't paying attention.

'Here we go!' he cried. With a final flick of a switch, the TARDIS sprang to life, as excited as its owner to get going once more. Martha fell back into the jump seat as the room began to vibrate.

The TARDIS began shuddering again.

'Here we are!' the Doctor announced. 'One tropical paradise, palm trees and non-extinct birds included in the price. Incidentally, here's an interesting if disputed fact: the word "dodo" is a corruption of the Dutch "doedaars", meaning fat, um, rear. So if a dodo asks you if its bum looks big, probably tactful to fib.'

The instant that the ship had ground to a halt, the Doctor's hand was on the door lever. Martha loved that about him, the eagerness to explore, to tear off the wrapping of each new place like a child with its presents at Christmas.

The doors opened. Framed in the doorway was a large brown-y grey-y white-y bird with a little tufty tail and a comically curved beak, far too big for its head. Actually, it was the thing's size overall that surprised Martha the most – she'd been expecting maybe a turkey, and it was much bigger than that, perhaps a metre in height.

But what shouldn't have surprised her was that despite its unbelievably sophisticated technology, despite the Doctor's supposedly expert piloting and despite the automatic dodo detector, the TARDIS had got it wrong again. Oh, a dodo had been detected all right; there was the proof right in front of her.

But what it wasn't surrounded by was a tropical paradise complete with palm trees. Instead there was a sign:

Raphus cucullatus, Dodo. And there was a resigned dullness in the creature's eye. It was in a cage.

What might have surprised her though was maybe . . . just maybe, the TARDIS had got it right for the Doctor.

* * *

Martha was waiting for the Doctor in the Earth section of MOTLO, a planet sized museum dedicated to collecting the last specimen of every extinct species in the galaxy. With her by the empty dodo case were the remaining five Collection Agents, along with Dorothea the non-extinct Dodo. It seemed rather appropriate.

They'd been standing there for a few minutes when Martha spotted the Doctor approaching. Well, there wasn't anything to mask his approach. As far as the eye could see, the Earth section was still absolutely empty. She had only intended to release the Doctor from his exhibit as the last Time Lord specimen, but things went a bit wrong.

'You couldn't do it?' she asked him, trying to keep the dismay out of her voice.

'Yes, I could,' he replied.

Everyone looked puzzled. 'So . . . it didn't work,' Rix said.

'Oh, I think it did.' The Doctor appeared rather pleased with himself. 'Thing is, when I said I was returning everything, I didn't actually mean I was bringing them back here. They've all gone home. When you've got a time machine in the mix . . .'

'You sent them back to their own times!' Martha exclaimed, realising what that meant. 'To die alone . . .' she hugged Dorothea.

But the Doctor was still smiling. 'Well, I may not have got it spot on,' he said. 'You know, tricky to get these things exact. It's entirely possible that they may have arrived quite a few years before they left, when members of their species were plentiful.'

Martha gaped at him. Wasn't that the sort of thing people were warned about, in science-fiction stories and stuff? 'But . . . couldn't they end up being their own grandparents or something?'

He shrugged. 'Maybe. I don't think it'll worry them that much. No one's going to get out the family photo album and say, "Hey – that jellyfish looks familiar."'

And then Martha thought about how Eve the MOTLO curator had been willing to freeze the Doctor and her. 'But there might have been, you know, people.'

He looked suddenly serious. 'Then I hope they'll forgive me.'

She thought about it for a second, about how she'd feel if it were her. But she couldn't imagine it.

'So . . . sort of a happy ending,' she said, but she couldn't feel completely happy inside. 'Not every animal would have got back home because of me though.'

'Which ones were those?' the Doctor asked, but the guilt was hitting too hard for her to spot the twinkle in his eye.

'You know – the ones that landed in the sea and stuff on modern Earth.'

'Ah, yes.' Now she couldn't fail to notice that he looked happier than events warranted. 'While you were down on Earth – did you notice a single dinosaur apart from that Megalosaurus?'

'Er, yes,' she said. 'They were the big ones with teeth on the TV, weren't they?'

'Ah, not the Dromaeosaurs, they were clones,' he said.

Eve, the crazy curator, the potty proprietor, had been cloning some of the exhibits in a mad scheme to destroy the Earth. Frank, a Collection Agent who came from a planet called Kinjana, had been her accomplice.

The Doctor continued his explanation. 'Like the sabre-toothed tigers and the dodos. Funny thing, when I came to think about it – the news reports, TV, all over the world – not a sign of anything other than those three species, which was a bit odd, considering that 300 billion creatures should have just materialised. In fact, the only non-clone seemed to be the Megalosaurus, which, funnily enough, was the one that gave me the idea in the first place.'

'Come again?' Martha said, trying to keep up. 'Words of one syllable might be a good idea. How come the animals weren't there? I sent them all back.'

He grinned. 'You did. And I hijacked them all on arrival.'

'So not only did you send them back to a time before they were collected . . .'

'I picked them up a few hours before I'd had the idea of doing it in the first place. Them and any strays left over from Frank's business empire. Little Mervin the missing link, for example.'

'So what about the Megalosaurus?'

'Well, I knew I had to make an exception for it, because without it the pendant would never have had anything to track back to twenty- first-century Earth, so I'd never have met it, and I'd never have had the idea to send the animals back to before their own times which I had to exclude it from.'

Sometimes, when Martha listened to the Doctor, she got the impression that someone had taken a perfectly sensible, straightforward thought and then cut and pasted it at random all over the place. She just nodded and went 'mm'. The others did too.

For a moment, everyone just stood around going 'mm', Then Nadya said, 'You know what this means? We're all out of a job.'

'Probably get a transfer to another section . . .' said Vanni.

'Ah,' said the Doctor, in his 'spanner in the works' voice. 'When I said I was returning everything – I really did mean everything. Seemed a waste, being in the central computer for the whole museum and not taking advantage of it . . . There are no more sections. There are no more exhibits.'

'No more MOTLO?'

'Nail on the head, that girl.'

The Collection Agents all looked a bit lost. Well, a lot lost really. 'So . . . what happens now?' asked Celia. 'Things will still be going extinct.'

Martha nodded. 'Yeah, but it's OK to feel passionate about it. Like how you attacked the poacher who was trying to shoot the rhino? Why not try to stop the extinctions in a different sort of way?'

Celia sniffed dismissively, but there was a spark in her eyes where Martha's words had hit home

The Doctor and Martha headed back to the TARDIS. 'Oh,' said Martha as they arrived in the relevant corridor. 'Um . . . I don't actually know how to open the secret door from this side. Frank sort of let me in the first time.'

'And I didn't use the door at all,' said the Doctor. He pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. 'Luckily I have a key that fits any lock . . .'

The screwdriver hummed, and to Martha's relief the secret door clicked open. And so did another other secret door on the opposite side of the corridor, and led into a very small, spartan room. Inside was a clear case, the same as all the other ones in the museum – and there was one single, solitary exhibit frozen inside.

Martha frowned. 'I thought you sent everything back,' she said to the Doctor.

He was frowning as well. 'I thought I did too.' He took a couple of steps closer, and his eyes widened in recognition. 'Do you realise what this is?' he asked Martha.

She shook her head. 'Should I?'

He pulled the pendant out of his pocket and held it up, displaying the MOTLO logo. A line drawing of a creature's head, a creature with tusks and triangular eyes.

Martha took the pendant and edged nearer, peering intently at the head of the creature inside the case. 'It's the same thing,' she said. 'Except . . . this one looks like it's crying. There's a tear on its cheek.'

There was a label, not a neat computer-generated one like the other exhibits had had, but small and handwritten. Martha bent down to read it. "Hr'oln",' she said. 'Hang on, h, r, apostrophe, o, l, n. That was Eve's password. Her first pet, Tommy said.'

She looked again at the animal. It reminded her a bit of the Steller's sea cow she'd seen in the museum, although only a quarter of the size of that giant animal and with arms instead of flippers. 'Not exactly a cat or dog.'

'I think,' the Doctor told her, 'that it's Eve's very first "specimen", the thing she built the museum around. If it was never collected in the first place, my watchamadoodles with the computer wouldn't have affected it. But that doesn't mean I can't get it home.'

He took out the sonic screwdriver and used it to switch off the stasis field. The tusked head slowly lifted and, after 500 million years, the tear fell. The creature opened its mouth. 'Eve?' it said.

Hr'oln, was a scientist, the last of the Cirranins, a technologically advanced people who were wiped out in a terrible, final war. The whole planet was destroyed and everything on it – every Cirranin, every Vish, every Elipig, every Grun. The Doctor felt a tragic affinity with the Cirranin and their fate.

Hr'lon had constructed Eve to be a companion and assistant in building her scientific equipment. And when the race of people Hr'lon was living among were wiped out by disease, she declared to Eve that she never wanted to see a species die out again.

Unfortunately, Eve took that as a programming instruction from her creator.

Martha thought Hr'oln was going to cry again when they took her into the laboratory and she saw Eve lying there, but whether it was for herself, or for the dead android, or at this further evidence of what her few ill-chosen words had led to, she couldn't say.

'She was my only friend once,' Hr'oln said, 'and I think I have need of a friend again. We will work together to repopulate the planet.'

She gestured round her at the scientific apparatus and the dodo pen. 'After all, no one knows better how this all works.'

'You could maybe rewire the "murderous scheming cow" circuit, though,' Martha suggested. But they couldn't really blame Hr'oln for what Eve had become, any more than they could blame Eve herself. After all that Hr'oln had lost . . .

And now the museum had gone too. 'No one will ever see an ayeaye again,' Martha said. 'Or a passenger pigeon, or a three-striped box turtle. No one without a time machine, anyway.'

'Nothing lasts forever,' the Doctor said, gazing into the distance, his thoughts far away. And then he focused again, and grinned. 'Well, except the dodo . . .'

'Hang on, I know about cloning,' said Martha, 'you only get an exact copy, you can't propagate a species by it. Eve only had one of each kind. There won't be any boy Dorotheas.'

'True,' the Doctor agreed, sighing. He drew something out of his pocket, which Martha recognised as the feather from Dorothea he'd used to track her to the lab. Then he drew something out of his other pocket. The original dodo feather that had brought the TARDIS to the museum in the first place. 'Looks like it belongs to a boy to me,' he said.

'Woo!' Martha gave him a hug, then released it as she thought back to all those genetics lectures at medical school. 'Oi, you are talking to a medical student here, and I know you can't clone from a feather. You're just trying to make me feel better.'

'Martha, this is the future! Just accept that they can do things.' He looked suddenly serious. 'I don't do white lies.'

'Sorry,' she said, and hugged him again. 'And who knows how many other samples might just happen to drop out of my pockets . . .' he said, as he unlocked the TARDIS door. 'Hang on, pockets, that reminds me . . .'

He reached into his jacket and pulled out the I-pad with the I-Spyder Book of Earth Creatures on it. Martha had been keeping a tally of all the creatures she'd seen on this adventure, and if she scored nine million, she'd get a certificate.

But she didn't hold out a hand for the I-pad. 'All the stuff I've seen,' she said, 'and I haven't got anywhere near enough points for a certificate. I think it's impossible.'

The Doctor grinned. 'Oh, I think there's one elusive specimen that you might be able to track down . . .' He scrolled through the index and pointed out an entry.

She laughed. 'Are they joking?'

He shook his head. 'No, just leaping to the wrong conclusion from the evidence.'

She did the sums, and couldn't believe it, because she was still one point short.

So the Doctor pointed out another entry, and Martha smiled. 'Of course!' And then she smiled again, because this really was the end of the adventure. Well, apart from one last goodbye . . .

The Doctor was inside the TARDIS. Martha stood in the doorway, holding Dorothea. 'So . . . you must have had pets on board the TARDIS before, right?' she said hopefully.

The Doctor thought for a moment, K-9 wasn't really a pet. 'You never met Mickey, did you?' Then he smiled and shook his head. 'Being apart from your own kind for ever – that's quite a burden to bear, you know.' He looked straight at her. 'However much you're loved.'

Martha held his gaze for a few moments, then dropped her eyes to Dorothea. 'Right,' she said reluctantly. She walked over to the pen, and lowered the bird inside. Without a backward glance, it trotted off to join its fellows. After a few moments, it was lost among the crowd.

Martha, staring wistfully at the dodo throng, tried to pretend she knew which one was Dorothea. But, really, she didn't. So she thought instead of the future, of the planet where a dead species would live again. Then she thought of the past, of the last dodo that had been, to her, the first dodo; no longer doomed to a choice between a lonely life or a lonely death – and hoped that it was happy, wherever it was.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

Martha smiled to herself as she placed her I-Spyder Arachnid First Class certificate on the fridge with a Statue of Liberty novelty magnet. She had registered her score on the electronic book, and her certificate had been sent back electronically, where it appeared from the molecular transfer slot in the TARDIS console.

This is to certify that

MARTHA JONES

has obtained the rank of

ARACHNID FIRST CLASS

with an I-Spyder points total of

9,000,001

signed

Big Chief I Spyder

Certificate no. 00000001

There were two final additions that had boosted her score just enough to qualify for a certificate.

THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES

 **TIME LORD**

Dominus temporis

Location: worldwide

The Time Lord is a rare bipedal, bicardial mammal. It frequently mingles with herds of Homo sapiens, but can be distinguished from them by its unique physiology and distinctive fearless behaviour. It is between approximately 1.5 and 2 metres in height, and can have white, black, brown or blond hair. It is most commonly found in Europe, especially the United Kingdom.

 **Addendum:**

It has been suggested that the Time Lord is of non-terrestrial origin. However, sightings spanning several millennia indicate that, even if it did not originate on Earth, it should now be classified as an immigrant species.

 **I-Spyder points value: 8963400**

THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES

 **HUMAN**

Homo sapiens

Location: Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia

The human is a bipedal mammal that walks upright. It is mainly hairless with only a few patches of hair, the main one being on its head. Its smooth skin ranges from a pale pinky-white to a deep black. The male human is on average taller and heavier than the female. It is the only species on Earth to voluntarily clothe itself. As of publication, the human is still abundant on Earth.

 **I-Spyder points value: 2**

This made her final submission:

THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES

 **Creature Points**

Dodo 800

Megatherium 500

Paradise parrot 500

Velociraptor 250

Mountain gorilla 500

Aye-aye 900

Siberian tiger 600

Kakapo 900

Indefatigable Galapagos mouse 1500

Stegosaurus 500

Triceratops 550

Diplodocus 600

Ankylosaurus 650

Dimetrodon 600

Passenger pigeon 100

Thylacine 250

Black rhinoceros 300

Mervin the missing link 23500

Tau duck 5

Dong tao chicken 4

Red-eared slider 40

Chinese three-striped box turtle 350

Forest dragonfly 150

Phorusrhacos 450

Steller's sea cow 1000

Sabre-toothed tiger 500

Megalosaurus 600

Time Lord 8963400

Human 2

 **Subtotal 9000001**

She sipped her cup of tea and remembered the look on the Doctor's face as she received the laminated award with childlike pleasure. It was a sort of memento of their adventure, and a tribute to Dorothea the Dodo.

Actually, thinking of the Doctor, where was he? It had gone very quiet. She finished her tea and put the cup in the sink before going to look for him in the Console Room. For a few moments, as Martha stepped towards the main console, she thought she was alone.

The walls that pulsed with light, the huge support struts that seemed hewn from living coral, the mundane latticework beneath her feet – everything around her hummed with secrets and potential, with the hint of amazing things as yet unseen, and with terrifying things that were all too clear.

It was like stepping into some old church where every footstep feels like an intrusion – or finding yourself alone in a mad scientist's lab and wondering which bubbling experiment or complex bit of machinery you'll fiddle with first.

She liked these moments without the Doctor – these momentary pauses for breath, when she had time to take it all in, to dwell on the things she had seen, the adventures she had already had. Paths already taken.

Normal life never seemed so dull and one-dimensional

as in these brief moments of reflection. Then again, she didn't like having too much time to think – sometimes

it was scary. These events that played out before her threatened, on occasion, to wash her away entirely.

Sometimes she just wanted to watch a beautiful sunset on an alien world, or meet someone famous from history, without battalions of blood-sucking monsters and megalomaniacal villains hoving into view.

It was probably just as well, then, that at that moment she noticed the familiar and reassuring form of the Doctor, leaning against one of the walls, his face partly hidden by shadows, staring intently at the small scanner screen some feet away. He was chewing absentmindedly on one of the arms of his glasses, seemingly lost in thought himself.

Martha circled around towards him and he looked up. 'It's just drifting through space,' he said, indicating the screen with his spectacles. 'It's easy to think that the cosmos is full of planets and stars and stuff, when actually . . . So much of it is empty. Bit of stray gas maybe, echoes of dark matter and plasma, but otherwise . . . Nothing.'

She came round and looked at the screen. It showed, as the Doctor said, a remarkably dark area of deep space. The velvety blackness was smudged by only a handful of distant stars. Against this there drifted the silent form of a slowly spinning craft. Orientated vertically, it resembled a great smooth tube of silver that thickened into some sort of blackened propulsion system at its base. At the top the tubular shape sprouted various spokes and protrusions.

'What's the ship?' asked Martha.

'It's . . . interesting,' said the Doctor, as if that explained everything. 'A Century-class research vessel. The Castor, if the faint mayday signals it's giving off are to be believed. Not built for speed, as you can see – once it reached its destination it would hang around in orbit like a space station. Jack-of-all-trades sort of vessel.'

'What happened to it?'

'Dunno,' said the Doctor. 'No life signs, but no signs of collision or other damage either. I can't tell at the moment how long it's been here. Days, years, decades . . .' Suddenly his hands moved over the TARDIS controls in a blur. He spoke more quickly, a growing excitement evident in his voice. 'There's an atmosphere, though, and gravity – now that's odd in itself. And there's a few other little things as well . . .'

'Enough to pique your interest?'

'Oh yes!' he exclaimed, grinning. 'My interest is well and truly piqued. It's reached a critical level of piqued-ness. If it were any more piqued, I'd . . .' He slammed a few more controls home and very nearly pirouetted on the spot. 'I think I'd run out of pique and need a little lie-down!'

The great engines at the heart of the TARDIS began to wheeze and shudder.

'Are we going to take a look?' asked Martha, wondering if the Doctor could pick up the uncertainty in her voice. Exploring a rusting old space station stuffed with dead bodies – or worse – didn't exactly sound like a barrel of laughs. 'What am I saying?' she realised, seeing the Doctor's expression. 'Of course we're going to take a look.'

'So, why the Castor?' asked Martha some moments later, when the Time Rotor had ceased its grinding, and they stepped through the TARDIS doors into darkness.

'Good question,' said the Doctor. He busied himself at a small panel on the wall, illuminated only by the piercing blue glow of his sonic screwdriver, then stepped backed triumphantly as the lights flickered on.

'They're not very bright,' said Martha. The lights that had come on were glowing dully, leaving pockets of shadow at regular intervals.

'Night cycle,' said the Doctor. He looked down the long, gently arcing corridor they found themselves in. 'I imagine whoever named this craft had a love of the classics.'

'Castor, as in Castor and Pollux – the sons of Leda,' said Martha, trying to elevate the conversation somewhat – and, if truth be told, wondering if she could impress the Doctor with her learning.

'That's right,' said the Doctor, peering at another panel recessed into the wall. 'Probably why on the colony world of Aractus they still say never turn your back on a swan.'

The Doctor slipped on his glasses while peering at the panel's small read-out screen. 'It's obviously had just enough sunlight to keep it ticking over. To be fair, it hasn't had to expend much energy recently – a smidge on life support, a soupcon on a few other essential systems . . . The engines haven't been used in years, so it's just kind of drifted.'

'Is that what drew you here?' asked Martha. The mystery of it all – a Mary Celeste that drifts in the spaces between the stars . . .'

"Or a Madame de Pompadour", the Doctor thought as he took a step back, suddenly serious. 'It reminds me of another ship, a craft with a link to a person from the history of your planet . . .' He trailed away, his eyes intense, as if he could stare through the metal hull of the craft and see the stars and nebulae beyond.

Martha recognised that look. He was thinking about Rose again. And she was right - partly. He was thinking about how Reinette had inadvertently awakened his emotions when he had looked into her mind. How upset Rose had been at his infatuation with Madame de Pompadour. It was after that incident that he realised he'd fallen in love with Rose.

'The Pollux?' suggested Martha hopefully, dragging him from his memories into the present.

'Never mind the Pollux,' said the Doctor abruptly, replacing what was left of the panel's outer covering. 'It's this vessel that fascinates me now. What happened here?'

* * *

Martha and the Doctor were back with the extra-dimensional creature on the Castor, and the TARDIS could only be a few corridors away. The creature had created a virtual world, existing within a pocket universe inside and outside the Castor.

Like a three dimensional computer game, there was a medieval village, lake, forest and mountains in the distance, all populated by ordinary people living ordinary lives; a sort of medieval version of "The Matrix".

The Doctor walked over to the prisoner, the god of the unreal world, and patted its flank. It had been captured by scientists and used to try and make evil human criminals good by removing their evil thoughts and intentions.

'Thank you,' he said simply. And then, after a pause, 'You really are amazing!' He turned to Martha. 'You're not so bad yourself, you know. If you hadn't gone back and tried to rescue Saul . . .'

Martha had forsaken the safety of the Castor to go back into the virtual forest to help a hunter that had befriended them and helped them when they first stepped into the virtual world.

The Doctor's eyes were distant, as if he – uniquely – could see through the walls of the Castor. Perhaps, just for a moment, he saw a dark forest and an island at the heart of a mysterious lake – and a village of flags and bridges, celebrating the return of its children.

'How did you rescue Saul from the monster?' he asked suddenly, the monster being a guardian that kept the inhabitants from straying outside of the simulation.

'Ah,' said Martha modestly. 'I did have a little help.' She had risked her life to distract the monster, when Saul's brother Petr ran out of the forest and struck the spider-like monster with his sword.

'Well, you can tell me later,' said the Doctor. 'I love a good story – heroes and monsters, that sort of thing.' He turned back to the creature.

'Like I said – give me a minute and we'll get you somewhere warm,' he said. When he could get the Castor into a star system, the solar arrays would give the creature the power it needed to sustain the virtual world and its inhabitants.

'And then you can drift again, far away from humans and all the evil things they do.' He glanced at Martha. 'Present company excepted, of course.'

'Then back to the TARDIS?' said Martha.

The Doctor nodded. 'Yes. Back to the TARDIS.' He turned to the doorway. 'I can access the Castor's navigation systems from just down here . . .' Martha followed him out of the angular chamber. Their feet rang out on the metal walkway as they strolled away.

'I don't quite understand why the ship's scanners didn't pick up that creature,' said Martha as they walked. 'It made a stab at tracking that shadow thing,' referring to the concentrated evil of hundreds of prisoners made carnate by the creatures subconscious.

'Well,' said the Doctor, 'that big splurge of data . . . Maybe it wasn't just the bubble world it was detecting – but the creature as well. It's a very fine line, between creator and creation.'

'And what will happen if the Castor drifts into darkness again?' queried Martha.

The Doctor smiled. 'Let's hope I do as good a job next time,' said the Doctor. 'Let's hope I have someone with me as . . . brave as you were.'

'What do you mean, "next time"?' Martha asked, accepting his compliment without comment.

"Legend has it that each Dazai must retreat from the village, and battle with their own monsters, before they can be considered truly worthy of the title", the village elder had told the Doctor. 'Oh, just something the Dazai said. She sort of implied that this had happened before. That the biggest lessons in life we need to learn again and again.'

'And what lesson do we learn from all this? Not to go exploring when you find yourself in a forest in deep space?'

'Oh, yeah, that,' said the Doctor with a grin. 'And . . .' He risked a final glance over his shoulder. 'To be capable of love, nine times out of ten . . . someone needs to love us first.'

"I'm capable of loving you" Martha thought to herself, "so why can't you love me?" But even as she thought it, she knew the answer. It was time to change that line of thougt.

'So was this ship like the other ship you mentioned?' Martha asked as they walked down the corridor towards the TARDIS.

'Nah, not really,' the Doctor said with his hands in his pockets. 'That one didn't have a Narnia-like forest in the middle of it.'

'No, I should think that was pretty unique.'

'Although . . . it did have a very nice 18th century, French fireplace that led to the Palace of Versailles.' He put the key in the door and turned it. Martha looked at him as though he was telling one of his tall tales again. 'And clockwork robots that chopped up the crew to use them as spare parts . . .'

He pushed the door open and they stepped inside.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

"To be capable of love, nine times out of ten . . . someone needs to love us first", the Doctor's words echoed in her mind as Martha made a cup of tea in the kitchen. She knew someone who loved her; unconditionally and with out question, although sometimes her manner and tone of voice would indicate the opposite.

She went to her room with her cuppa, and fifteen minutes later returned the console room, dressed in black trousers, purple vest top and a black cardigan. She noticed that the Doctor had changed into a blue pin striped suit with a purple shirt and dark T-shirt.

'Do you have some sort of communicator, like they do on Star Trek?' she asked him, fiddling with her mobile phone. 'I was going to phone home and see how everyone is.'

'I have got a phone here,' he said, nodding at the trim phone on the console. 'But let me have a look at your mobile,' he said, taking it off her as he took out his sonic screwdriver.

After a few seconds of fiddling, and wandering around the console . . .'There we go! Universal Roaming . . . never have to worry about a signal again,' he said, as he tossed the phone back to her.

'No way! But it's . . . too mad! You're telling me I can call anyone, anywhere in Space and Time on my mobile?!'

'Long as you know the area code . . . frequent Fliers' privilege,' he told her with a smile. 'Go on . . . try it.'

Martha started to dial home, when the TARDIS suddenly jerked sideways, throwing Martha to the floor. The Doctor managed to hold on to the console, and studied the monitor.

'Distress signal! Locking on!' His red converse flicked a lever on the console. 'Might be a bit of . . .' he started to say, as the TARDIS gave another jolt, throwing them around again. ' . . . Turbulence.' He popped his head above the console to see if she was alright. 'Sorry!'

They both climbed to their feet. 'Come on Martha! Let's take a look!'

* * *

'This is never your ship!' Orin Scannell said, as he walked up to the blue wooden box. He was a crewman on the SS Pentallian, which used energy scoops to gather fuel from the atmosphere of a star. Unfortunately the star Torajii, wasn't just a star, it was a sentient being, and it had defended itself.

'Compact! Eh!' he said as he walked around from behind the TARDIS. 'And another good word, robust . . . ! Barely a scorch mark on her,' he said with pride.

'We can't just leave them drifting with no fuel,' Martha said with concern. They'd had to dump the fuel that they had scooped from Torajii, so that the Doctor could live, and the ship would be allowed to leave.

'We've sent out an official mayday. The authorities will pick us up soon enough,' Riley Vashtee, the only other surviving crew member told them.

'Though how we explain what happened,' Scannell started to say.

'Just tell them,' The Doctor interrupted. 'That sun needs care and protection, just like any other living thing.' Scannell nodded in agreement, five of their friends had died learning that lesson.

The Doctor stepped inside the TARDIS, and Martha started to follow, when Riley rushed forwards, and gently held her elbow. 'So . . . uh, you're off then,' he said, and Martha nodded. They had shared a tender moment when they had been trapped in an escape pod and jettisoned towards the star.

'No chance I'll see you again?' he asked hopefully.

'Not really,' she replied, and saw the disappointment on his face. 'It was nice . . . not dying with you.' They both gave an unenthusiastic laugh. 'I reckon you'll find someone worth believing in.'

He looked her in the eyes. 'I think I already did.'

Martha returned the look, and something passed between them. She grabbed him into a passionate, post adrenalin kiss. 'Well done,' she said, backing into the TARDIS. 'Very hot.'

She stepped inside, and walked up the ramp towards the Doctor. 'So! Didn't really need you in the end, did we?!' she said jokingly, but when she saw his face, he was deep in thought, his face an impassive mask.

It was a cheap wisecrack and now she felt awful for saying it. Without him, she would have burned up in the escape pod along with crewman Riley. 'Sorry . . . how're you doing?'

He looked at her for a long while, before suddenly snapping out of his reflective mood, in that mercurial way of his. 'Now! What do you say? Ice skating on the mineral lakes of Cuhlhan, fancy it?'

'Whatever you like,' she said in a quiet, subdued voice. She thought he was going to open up to her, but he'd completely deflected the question of how he was feeling . . . again.

He gave a concerned glance in her direction, and saw that she was upset by his reluctance to discuss their near demise. 'By the way.' He reached into his inside pocket, 'you'll be needing this,' and pulled out a key, on a chain.

'Really?!' she asked in disbelief.

'Frequent Flier's Privilege,' he told her, as he lowered the key into her cupped hands. 'Thank you,' he said solemnly.

'Don't mention it,' she replied with a weak smile, and then remembered that she'd had a final farewell phone call with her mum, when she thought she was going to die in that escape pod.

'Oh no, Mum,' she said, as she reached her phone out of her pocket and selected her mum's number.

'Hello?' her mum said.

'Me again!' she said in a light hearted tone.

'Three calls in one day,' Francine said sarcastically, she was lucky if she got one call a month.

'Sorry about earlier . . . over emotional . . . mad day!'

'What are you doing tonight? Why don't you come round? I'll make something nice and we can catch up.'

'Yeah! Tonight. Do my best. Um, just remind me, what day is it again?'

'Election day.'

'Right . . .'course. I'll be round for tea . . . roughly.'

'And what about . . .' Francine was going to ask about the Doctor, when Martha interrupted her.

'Anyway, gotta go! See you later! Love you!' She turned to look at the Doctor, who was looking at her over the console. 'Er, sorry about that . . . I sort of, erm, phoned her when I was stuck in that escape pod, thinking I was going to die.'

'Are you alright?' he asked her in return.

'Yeah, I'm fine now . . . So where were you taking me skating or what?' she asked, changing the mood.

He smiled at her. 'The mineral lakes of Cuhlhan.'

'Sounds great, just what we need, a bit of fun.'

'Right then.' He set the coordinates on the console, and she felt the TARDIS weave its way through the Vortex to its destination. 'Now, let's have a bite to eat and get changed.'

She followed him out of the console room and into the kitchen, where they made some sandwiches.

'Will I need warm clothes, I mean, how cold are these crystal lakes?' she asked him as they sat down to eat.

'It's not cold at all . . . I mean, I know I called it 'ice skating', but really, its crystal skating to be precise. I only said ice skating to differentiate it from roller skating . . . and it's more crystal sliding, than skating.'

They finished their sandwiches, and headed for their respective rooms to freshen up and change their clothes. They both reappeared in the console room sometime later. The Doctor was back in his familiar brown suit, and Martha had changed her top for a black vest top with leather jacket, and she'd put her hair into a ponytail. She was starting to get her 'space legs' in the TARDIS, because she could feel it materialise into normal space, and heard the soft 'clomp' as it gently landed.

'There you are then, its evening twilight out there, and I'll let you have the first look,' he said with a knowing smile.

She gave him an uncertain, questioning look, before walking down the ramp and opening the doors. What she saw took her breath away. The TARDIS had landed in a pedestrian area, which curved away to the left and right. Behind them were shops and restaurants, and in front of them . . . well, it was stunning.

A flat sheet of what looked like ice, stretched off into the distance, and it glowed with subtle shades of pinks, greens, blues, yellows and purples, which seemed to light the very air itself.

'Oh . . . my . . . God!' Martha breathed. 'It's . . . it's . . .'

'It's a single crystal, polished over millennia by tiny sand grains until it became a mirror smooth sheet, the size of Lake Windermere.'

'It's . . . it's . . . .' She was still struggling to find words to describe the spectacle in front of her.

'There are powerful lamps buried at the edges that internally illuminate the crystal by refraction,' he said, reducing the breathtaking spectacle into a scientific explanation. 'Come on, let's go, and get some skates on.'

As they walked to the edge of the paved area, Martha noticed that there were people on the crystal lake, zooming around, spinning and dancing as they went. In the distance, she could see a sailing ship on skis, gliding silently into the distance.

At the very edge of the lake, there were bench seats, with foot lockers underneath, that contained self adjusting skating boots, with soft, felt like blades that slipped over the crystal. They sat down and changed their footwear, putting their own shoes in the lockers, before teetering out onto the crystal 'ice'.

Martha had been ice skating before, at the Queens Ice Rink and Bowl in Bayswater, with Tish and Leo, and quickly got the hang of this new experience. And the Doctor . . . well, he was just the Doctor, and would claim it was his superior Gallifreyan physiology that made him a natural on skates.

There were children, zooming around them, playing tag, and a version of football that involved a large, soft disc, similar to an ice hockey puck. Martha laughed, when a family pet that resembled a bear cub, tried to follow the family onto the ice, and then tried to work out why it could no longer walk properly.

Martha was skating alone at one point, when the Doctor nonchalantly glided along side her with his hands in his pockets, his body sideways to the direction of travel, grinning at her like an idiot. She burst out laughing, and he slowly started to rotate as he slid along.

'Ah, don't think that was supposed to happen,' he said over his shoulder to her. She scooted up to him and linked arms so that they could skate side by side, their legs moving in unison.

'This is nice,' Martha said, just enjoying the experience of taking part in an activity with him.

There was a pause as the Doctor examined his own feelings on the experience, before he looked at her and gave her a warm smile. 'Yes, it is.'

When they'd had their fill of skating, they returned to the bench to put their shoes back on, before browsing the various shops along the lake front. Eventually, they found themselves back at the TARDIS.

'That was brilliant,' Martha said with a smile. 'Thank you.'

'My pleasure,' he replied, flashing his eyebrows as he opened the door for her.

He started up the Time Rotor, and put the TARDIS into the Vortex, when a gentle beeping came from the console.

'What's that?' Martha asked as she saw him frown.

'Some kind of signal.' He started to adjust some of the controls.

'Not another distress signal I hope.' She'd had enough distress with the signal from the SS Pentallian. Why couldn't they get a phone signal or a wi-fi signal now and again?

'Dunno,' he said, still frowning, and then he looked up and grinned. 'Only one way to find out.'

Martha wondered how his shoulder didn't dislocate as he pulled up a lever with a flourish. They hung on to the console as the TARDIS changed direction down another branch of the Vortex before landing.

The Doctor catapulted from the TARDIS, sonic screwdriver held out in front of him. He pivoted on his heels, turning a full circle. 'Come on, come on,' he muttered.

Martha stepped out of the TARDIS behind him, a look of gleeful expectation on her face. When she saw she was in a backyard between a couple of smelly bins, rather than on some alien planet with pink skies and purple grass, she frowned. 'Is this where the signal was coming from?' she asked.

'It wasn't a signal,' he said absently, 'more a sort of . . . splurge. A big fat splurge of power.'

'But what kind of power? I mean, what made it so special?'

'It was old,' he said, still not looking at her.

'How old?'

'Oh . . . very, very, very, very, very, very old, I'd say. Old enough to make my teeth itch. And my palms.' He examined the palm of his left hand thoughtfully. 'Maybe I'm allergic.'

'You'd better avoid Keith Richards then,' said Martha. 'He'd bring you out in hives.'

The sonic screwdriver didn't bleep or shine brighter or anything, but suddenly the Doctor shouted, 'you beauty! Go on, girl!' Next second, he was running towards a gate in the high fence surrounding the yard, all bony knees and elbows, his spiky, tousled hair seeming to fizz with energy.

Martha ran after him. She both loved and hated it when he was like this. She found it exhilarating and frustrating at the same time. He was a bit like a brilliant but temperamental racehorse. Sometimes all you could do was hang on for dear life and hope you wouldn't fall off and be left on the track, coughing and spluttering in his wake.

'So where are we?' she shouted as he yanked back the bolts on the gate and threw it open.

'Somewhere in New England,' he called over his shoulder.

'Is that New England on New Earth or New England in old America?'

'The second one,' he said.

They followed whatever signals the Doctor was getting from the sonic for maybe fifteen minutes. To Martha's relief they didn't run the whole time. The Doctor alternated his pace between sprinting, jogging and strolling, depending on the strength or accuracy of the signal. A few times he stopped completely and cast about in a circle; on one occasion he even pointed the sonic straight up at the darkening sky before shaking his head.

During their search, Martha looked around as much as she was able, drinking in her surroundings. It turned out they had landed behind an ice cream parlour called Harry Ho's, which was one of numerous stores and eating places fringing the main, tree-lined square of a small, picturesque town called Blackwood Falls.

She got the name of the place from a big banner strung across the main street advertising the Blackwood Falls Halloween Carnival. Even without the banner she would have guessed the time of year, simply from the profusion of window displays featuring carved pumpkins, witches, ghosts, skeletons and the like.

She thought the green mist which began to envelop them as they moved out from the town centre and into the suburbs was taking things a bit too far, though. The mist was odourless but chilly. It felt like someone caressing her cheeks with cold fingers.

'Doctor, what is this stuff?' she asked.

He shrugged. He'd slowed to a walking pace now, which he seemed, for the moment, content to maintain. 'One thing it's not is of this earth.'

'It's alien, you mean?' She linked her arm with his. She didn't want him to bolt off again and lose her in the fog. 'Is it sentient?'

'Nah. It's just a by-product of the energy . . .'

'Splurge?'

He grinned. 'That, yeah.'

'It's not toxic, is it?'

'Don't think so. Least I'm not picking up anything.'

Three minutes later he stopped outside the gate of what appeared to be a big clapboard house with a long front porch. It was hard to tell because the mist seemed to be at its thickest here, reducing the building to a dark blocky haze.

'It's here,' he said.

'In the house?'

'Behind it. Come on.' He vaulted the fence and ran across the lawn and up the side of the house, Martha in tow. She felt a tingle of excitement, wondering what marvels were in store for her this time.

'A dead tree?' she said. 'Is that it?'

The Doctor prowled around the base of the tree, his hands in his trouser pockets. He produced a pair of black-rimmed spectacles and slipped them on, then bent over to peer at something. 'Ooh, look,' he said, 'a hole.'

Martha stood beside him, wrinkling her nose. The mist might not smell of anything, but the tree, or something close to it, did. It was the smell of something dead.

'A burrow?' she ventured.

'I'd say it's more likely someone's been digging,' said the Doctor. 'Look how smooth the sides are. I wonder what they found.'

'You think something old and alien was lying dormant under here, and that when it was dug up, it came alive and sent out that . . . power splurge?'

The Doctor gave her one of his heart-melting grins. 'That's what I love about you, Martha Jones!' he cried. 'You use your brain!'


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

In the Halloween Carnival showground, the Doctor tore open his borrowed rucksack and lifted out the arcane Necris book. It was a source of power for the aliens ship, and he'd restrained it with a band of iron.

With one blast of the sonic the iron band securing it broke into two pieces and fell to the ground. The Doctor held the Necris above his head.

'This stops now!' he yelled, pressing the still-active sonic against the Necris's cover. The fleshy material began to ripple and shudder as though in pain. 'Show yourselves, Hervoken, or your precious book gets it.'

There was a bubbling and a boiling from the centre of the vortex swirling above the showground, and suddenly there they were, a dozen or more Hervoken, materialising out of thin air. They hovered ten metres above the ground, in a wide circle around the Doctor, tall and spindly, like great black carrion crows.

The Doctor had said that residual psychic energy emanating from the dormant aliens had worked its way into the subconscious minds of the town's folk, transforming the aliens into Halloween folklore. Martha wondered if Tim Burton had ever stayed in the town; it would certainly explain why Jack Skellington in "The Nightmare Before Christmas" looked like the Hervoken.

Hair still blowing around his head, arms raised aloft, the Doctor shouted, 'Right, this is the deal. Listen carefully. I'm not open to negotiation. You put an end to this slaughter now or I'll destroy the Necris. And don't think I can't or I won't, because I can and I will. I've broken through everyone of its defences, and all I have to do is increase the sonic frequency by another few levels, and your indispensable little starter motor will be dust. And don't think you can snatch it away with your spells either. The sonic field has been configured to deflect any rescue attempt. You try to transmat this beauty and your energy will bounce right back atcha. As long as my sonic is in contact with your Necris, you can't do a thing, you can only listen.'

He paused briefly and looked around the circle of Hervoken, his expression steely. Then he said, 'OK, what's going to happen is this. The people of Blackwood Falls want you out of their town and off their planet. So you put an end to this now and I'll find you another source of fuel – one that doesn't involve killing people. I can do it, easy. I'm good with engines. Soon as the ship's ready, we'll clear the town and you can vamoose. All right, you'll wreck a few houses, but so what? Houses are just things, aren't they? They're not important – like people, like lives. This way you get your Necris back and you get to keep your ship. Course, you'll have to keep an eye out for the Eternals whilst you're up there, but that's your problem. Once you're off this planet, our association ends.'

Despite the continuing screams and cries and roars, not to mention the still-blaring music, the echoes of the Doctor's voice seemed to ring out around the showground. The Hervoken regarded him impassively, not responding.

'Well, come on,' the Doctor shouted, 'I haven't got all –'

Something swooped from the sky, seeming to appear from nowhere. Martha ducked, thinking it was a huge bird, an eagle perhaps. The flying creature snatched the book from the Doctor's hand before he had a chance to alter the frequency of the sonic. Martha saw that it was some kind of sprite or evil fairy – doubtless another of the transformed children. She looked back at the Doctor, still not entirely sure what had happened, and saw an expression of horror on his face.

'No!' he shouted.

The Hervoken leader gave a triumphant hiss and performed a magician-like flourish whose meaning was patently obvious: You lose. The Doctor and Martha could do nothing but watch as the sprite delivered the Necris into the Hervoken leader's hands. The alien opened its mouth wide in what Martha could only think of as a gloating grin and muttered a quick incantation. A fizzing green light enveloped the Necris, and it faded away . . .

. . . to reappear seconds later in the hollow on top of the central dais in the main chamber of the Hervoken ship. Instantly the mass of claw like roots fringing the hollow clamped into place over the book, like the jaws of a Venus fly trap closing on an unsuspecting insect.

Martha felt numb. They had lost. The Doctor had made the silliest, most fundamental mistake by not looking behind him, and suddenly it was all over.

She looked up at him. His face was sombre, almost wistful. 'You really shouldn't have done that,' he murmured to the Hervoken. Then he held up his sonic screwdriver.

The Necris convulsed, sending a shock wave through the Hervoken ship. Then, like a giant sponge, it began to absorb energy, to suck the already thin life-blood from the veins of the vessel at an incredible speed. Ripples of energy flowed from the thrashing vines. The central dais pulsed and shimmered as the ship's entire stock of reserve power converged on it.

Like a heart engorged with blood, the Necris began to swell and rupture. As it absorbed more power than it was designed to hold, it started to glow fiercely, like a reactor core reaching critical mass. A high-pitched whine filled the Hervoken ship – a whine that escalated rapidly into what sounded like a scream of unbearable pain . . .

A ring of green eyed children, transformed into the Halloween monsters they were dressed as, closed in on the Doctor, Martha, and the young brothers Rick and Chris Pirelli. The children had been transformed by the Hervoken, a group of aliens that had lain dormant under the town for centuries.

The monster children suddenly stopped. Some of the creatures stood stock still, like soldiers awaiting orders, whilst others began to sway and stagger about in confusion.

One child, which had become a hulking Frankenstein's monster with a scarred, patchwork face and clomping lead boots, raised its hands to its head and dropped to its knees with a groan. As Martha watched, she saw the greenish lustre fade from the children's eyes, and then a ripple of energy leave each of their bodies and spiral upwards into the vortex of mist above.

The image made her think of a mass of souls vacating the bodies of the dead. However, these children were not dying; instead, they were being given back their lives.

The instant the energy left them, each of the kids reverted to how they had been before the Hervoken spell had consumed them. As they became themselves again, they looked around, dazed and shocked, as if waking from a collective nightmare. A few burst into tears; some cried out for their parents. Martha watched the Frankenstein's monster peel the mask from its face and realised it was Rick's friend, Scott.

Meanwhile, something was happening to the Hervoken. They were beginning to thrash about like black sheets in a strong wind, to wail in their thin, childlike voices. The Doctor watched them unblinkingly, his face like thunder, sonic still held out before him, its piercing warble splicing the air.

The thrashing of the Hervoken became increasingly more frenzied. Martha thought of animals caught in traps, struggling desperately to escape. She saw their huge pale heads beginning to blacken and shrivel, their eyes sinking into their sockets, their many-jointed fingers curling up like burning twigs.

Finally, their bodies began to crumble away, like vampires in sunlight, and within seconds they were nothing but ribbons of black ash, streaming into the centre of the vortex.

With the Hervoken gone, the green mist, which had shrouded Blackwood Falls since the Necris had been unearthed over twenty four hours earlier, began rapidly to disperse. It too drained into the vortex, the radiance at the centre of which gradually faded and shrank until there was nothing left but darkness.

Once the mist had cleared, the vortex itself dwindled and died, simply petering out like a spent tornado. Suddenly Martha realised that for the first time since they had arrived she could see stars twinkling in the night sky. She took a deep breath, relishing the cold, clean sharpness of the air.

She turned to the Doctor and was about to speak when she heard and felt a deep, subterranean rumble. Almost immediately the night sky some distance away was illuminated by a harsh white glow, which surged upwards before disintegrating into a million greenish sparks that winked out as they fell slowly back to earth.

'What was that?' asked Rick in a small, shocked voice.

Martha began to shake her head, and then all at once it came to her. 'It was the Hervoken ship, wasn't it, Doctor? The tree. You did something to the book, didn't you? Drained off their energy.'

The Doctor, his face grim, turned off his sonic and pocketed it before giving her a curt nod. 'Never underestimate the power of the printed word,' he said. 'End of story.'

* * *

The Doctor and Martha stood with the Pirelli family, staring into the ash-filled crater at the bottom of the garden. There was no trace whatsoever of the black tree. Not a single twig had survived.

'I don't believe this,' Tony Pirelli kept saying, shining his torch down into the hole. 'I just don't believe it.'

The Doctor said nothing. His face was expressionless, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Now the Hervoken had gone, there was something in the town that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It was Martha who had insisted on taking the boys home.

It was as though the horror of the Hervoken had been replaced by a hunger, a slavering, feral hunger. Back in the Halloween Carnival showground, he could have sworn that some of the townsfolk were sniffing the air, almost as if they could smell his Artron energy.

The feeling may have been there before, masked or sated by the Hervoken psychic energy. He had wanted to slope off without saying goodbye, leaving the Blackwood Falls townsfolk to pick up the pieces of their lives.

'Believe me,' he had said to Martha, 'it's easier that way.'

'For who?' she had demanded, and he had just sighed.

In the end, he had agreed to stay a bit longer. He might be the one who usually called the shots, but when she dug her heels in, when she made it known that something was important to her, he was usually OK about it.

People had died tonight. Wherever they went, people always died. And Martha thought part of the reason the Doctor never wanted to stick around afterwards was so that he didn't have to come to terms with that. Maybe he thought that death followed him around, that when people died it was his fault. He had saved countless lives even in the short time she had been with him, but he never failed to be haunted by the ones he didn't save.

Rick looked up at the Doctor now with something like awe. 'What did you do?' he asked.

'I subverted the kinetic flow of the energy generated by the Necris,' the Doctor replied. 'It caused the ship to implode.' He sounded almost ashamed.

'Huh?' said Rick.

'He made their spells run backwards,' said Martha, knowing she was massively oversimplifying what in reality was no doubt a very convoluted and technical explanation. 'He undid everything the Hervoken had done.' Suddenly a thought struck her. 'Hey, does this mean Mr Clayton will have got his mouth back?'

'S'pose,' muttered the Doctor.

'Well, that's good, isn't it?' she said, trying to cheer him up.

'Hmm,' he replied.

'So this Necris thing?' said Chris. 'You changed it with your little torch? When you were hanging out in my room this afternoon?'

'It wasn't hard,' said the Doctor almost apologetically. 'It was just a bit of basic tinkering.'

'The hard bit was convincing the Hervoken they'd beaten you,' said Martha. 'You certainly fooled me.'

The Doctor shrugged. 'They'd have been suspicious if I'd just given the Necris back to them, even if I'd made it sound like an exchange for the lives of the townspeople. They'd have checked it over and found out what I'd done. I knew our only chance was to make them think they'd outsmarted me. They were hoist with their own petard.'

'But what if they'd agreed to your terms?' said Martha. 'Would you have fixed the Necris for them and let them destroy the town?'

The Doctor frowned. 'I knew they wouldn't.'

'But what if they had?'

He looked at her, and his eyes suddenly seemed as black and depthless as space. 'I gave them their chance,' he said evenly. 'They didn't take it.'

Martha saw Tony and Amanda Pirelli looking at the Doctor almost warily, and knew what they were thinking: Is this the kind of person we want our boys hanging around with?

'Excuse me, mister,' Tony said almost hesitantly, 'but who exactly are you again?'

'I'm just a traveller, passing through,' the Doctor said.

'What's that supposed to mean?' asked Amanda.

The Doctor shot Martha a look: "See? I told you it was easier to just leave".

A voice came floating out of the darkness, beyond the crater. 'Sounds like we might be in for a spot of subsidence, thanks to you, Doctor.'

'Etta!' said the Doctor delightedly. 'In the nick of time, as always.'

Tony shone his torch into Etta's face.

'Do you mind?' she said, raising a hand.

'Sorry,' he said, and lowered the beam, lighting the way ahead for her.

'My, what a big hole,' she said. 'My garden fence is down there somewhere. Mind you, I think I prefer it without the tree. Much more neighbourly, don't you think?'

'Er . . . yes,' said Tony.

Etta was carrying a large plate, which she held out towards the group. 'Who's for a Halloween cookie?'

The cookies were in the shape of bats, coated with black icing, with red dots for eyes.

'I think I'll pass if you don't mind,' Martha said with a shudder.

'Me too,' said Rick, then caught a warning look from his parents.

'Then again, maybe not.'

'Lovely,' said the Doctor, shoving most of a cookie into his mouth. He made exaggerated yum-yum noises, and grabbed another from the plate, then, after a moment's hesitation, a third, which he dropped into his pocket.

He looked around nervously, as though expecting to see some Halloween ghoul sneak up on him. 'Right,' he said, 'well, better go. Things to do, people to see. Goodbye all. Come on, Martha.'

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and strode away, leaving Martha smiling sheepishly round at the group.

'Sorry,' she said. 'He doesn't like goodbyes. Well, I'd better . . .' She wafted a hand vaguely in the Doctor's direction.

Etta smiled. 'Go on, dear. You catch up with your spaceman. And tell him . . . thank you. On behalf of us all. Tell him thank you for saving our town.'

'I will,' said Martha, and raised a hand. 'Well, bye everyone. Maybe I'll see you again some time.' She doubted she would, though. That was what life with the Doctor was like. Meet people, share extraordinary times, move on.

'Wait up, Doctor,' she shouted, jogging after his gangly silhouette. And although she wanted to, she didn't look back. Not once, which turned out to be a good thing as it happened.

She fell in step next to him, and he grabbed her hand urgently, quickening his step. 'Martha, do you trust me?'

She frowned. 'Well yeah, of course,' she replied.

'We have to get to the TARDIS right now. Don't look behind you because we are being followed.'

'Followed?' Martha said, about to do that very human thing of turning to look.

'Don't turn around,' the Doctor hissed. 'If they see your face, we're done for. When I said we're being followed, what I meant to say was, we're being hunted.'

They reached the TARDIS at a run, and the key entered the lock with unerring accuracy. He twisted the key, and with a reassuring click, the door swung open; just as a bolt of green energy exploded on the unopened door.

'Get down!' he shouted, and a bolt of green energy passed over their heads and hit the console. He slammed the door shut, and they climbed up off the floor.

'Did they see you?' he asked her urgently, holding her shoulders.

'I don't know!' she replied, almost crying.

'Did they see you?'

'I don't know, I was too busy running!'

'Martha, it's important, did they see your face?'

She'd had her back to who ever it was who was chasing them. 'No, they couldn't have!'

He ran around the console and started up the time rotor. 'Off we go!'

Martha came and stood by him as he watched the time rotor pump up and down. A warning beep alerted him to a message on the monitor in Gallifreyan script.

'Arrrghhh!' He grabbed the monitor and read the warning. 'They're following us.'

'How can they do that?' Martha asked as he went back to the controls. 'You've got a time machine.'

'Stolen technology, they've got a Time Agent's vortex manipulator. They can follow us wherever we go . . . right across the universe.' He ran his fingers through his hair, looking into the distance. 'They're never going to stop.'

He held the back of his neck, deep in thought. 'Unless . . . I'll have to do it . . .'

He turned to Martha and gave her an intense look that went right into her soul. 'Martha, you trust me don't you?'

'Of course I do,' she said without hesitation.

'Because it all depends on you,' he said, as he rummaged under the console.

'What does, what am I supposed to do?'

He came from under the console, holding a fob watch. 'Take this watch, 'cos my life depends on it. The watch, Martha, this watch is me.'

She took the watch and nodded 'Right, okay, gotcha.' The Doctor ran around the console. 'No, hold on, completely lost,' she said, running after him.

'Those creatures are hunters. They can sniff out anyone, and me being a Time Lord, well, I'm unique. They can track me down across the whole of time and space.'

'Hah! And the good news is?'

'They can smell me, they haven't seen me. And their life span'll be running out, so we hide. Wait for them to die.'

'But they can track us down.'

He stopped working the console, and looked at her. 'That's why I've got to do it. I have to stop being a Time Lord. I'm going to become human.' He looked up to the domed ceiling, and watched a headset descend. 'Never thought I'd use this. All the times I've wondered.'

'What does it do?'

'Chameleon Arch . . . rewrites my biology. Literally changes every single cell in my body. I've set it to human.'

He put the fob watch into a receptacle on the front of the headset. 'Now, the TARDIS will take care of everything. Invent a life story for me, find me a setting, and integrate me.' He turned to look at her standing behind him. 'Can't do the same for you, you'll just have to improvise. I should have just enough residual awareness to let you in.'

'But, hold on. If you're going to rewrite every single cell, isn't it going to hurt?'

'Oh, yeah, it hurts.'


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

The Doctor was standing at the console, studying the monitor. 'Ah, right, the TARDIS is heading for the early twentieth century. Oh, brilliant, I'm going to be a teacher in a boarding school.'

'What about me?' Martha asked him.

'Er, we need to think of something that'll keep you close enough to keep an eye on me . . . What about my personal housemaid?'

'Gee, thanks,' she said sarcastically.

'Sorry, but early twentieth century Britain didn't have many women doctors, and certainly not from your ethnic background.'

'I suppose that'll have to do then. You're gonna owe me big time for this one Mister,' she said with a smile.

'More than you will ever know,' he said seriously. 'Why don't you go along to the wardrobe, and find some period clothing.'

She made her way out of the console room, and the Doctor operated the recorder on the monitor. 'This working?' he asked himself, tapping the screen. 'Martha, before I change, here's a list of instructions for when I'm human. One, don't let me hurt anyone. We can't have that, but you know what humans are like. Two, don't worry about the TARDIS. I'll put it on emergency power so they can't detect it, just let it hide away. Four, no, wait a minute, three, no getting involved in big historical events. Four, you . . . Don't let me abandon you. And five . . .'

In the wardrobe, she chose a simple, long black dress, with a long, charcoal grey coat, and a purple woollen hat. Putting them over her arm, she made her way back to the console room, where she could hear the Doctor talking in the distance.

'And twenty three, if anything goes wrong, if they find us, Martha, then you know what to do. Open the watch, everything I am is kept safe in there. Now, I've put a perception filter on it so the human me won't think anything of it. To him, it's just a watch. But don't open it unless you have to. Because once it's open, then the Family will be able to find me. It's all down to you, Martha. Your choice . . . Oh . . . and thank you.' Martha entered the room, and dropped the clothes on the jump seat.

'Oh, there you are . . . you found something to wear then,' he said with a forced smile. 'I've recorded a help file for you, for when I'm . . . well . . . not me. These are the controls here.'

He proceeded to show her how to access the messages, and then she had a go herself. She saw a file marked 'Emergency Programme One, message for Rose', and couldn't resist activating it. A hologram of a man with short hair, big ears, and a rather nice leather jacket appeared in front of her.

'This is Emergency Programme One. Rose, now listen, this is important. If this message is activated, then it can only mean one thing. We must be in danger. And I mean fatal. I'm dead or about to die any second with no chance of escape'.

The Doctor quickly switched off the recording. 'Not that one,' he said, locking and encrypting the file.

'Who was that?' she asked. It was someone who knew Rose, had Rose dumped the Doctor for this other man?

'An old friend . . . a very old friend,' he replied. 'Right then, time to do it,' he said reluctantly. He gave Martha a long hug, and then put the headset on, smiling weakly at her before the process started, and he started screaming in agony.

* * *

The Doctor walked across the field and up the hill from Joan Redfern's cottage, towards the TARDIS, where he could see Martha standing in front of the doors, waiting for him. This was going to be awkward, because Joan had fallen in love with his human alter ego, John Smith, and John Smith had fallen in love with her (he hadn't seen that one coming).

And then, Martha had declared that he was everything to her and that she loved him, not realising that as John Smith he would remember everything as the Doctor. And as the Doctor, he was already in love with a woman that he would never see again. "Blimey, talk about a love triangle", he thought to himself.

'All right. Molto bene!' he said as he reached her.

'How was she?' Martha asked.

'Time we moved on,' is all he would say, as far as Joan was concerned, he had killed John Smith, the man she had come to love.

'If you want, I could go and . . .' Martha started to offer.

'Time we moved on,' he said more firmly. What Martha didn't know was that Joan had asked him a question that hurt him, and he couldn't answer. "Answer me this. Just one question, that's all. If the Doctor had never visited us, if he'd never chosen this place on a whim, would anybody here have died?"

 **'** Erm, I meant to say back there, last night,' Martha started apologetically. 'I would have said anything to get you to change.' She was referring to her declaration of love for him.

'Oh yeah, of course you would, yeah,' he agreed hurriedly.

'I mean, I wasn't really . . .'

'Oh, no, no . . .'

'Good . . .'

'Fine . . .'

'So here we are then,' she said finally, having dug a big enough verbal hole to fall into.

'There we are then, yes,' he agreed, putting down the conversational spade.

Martha nodded in agreement, and they stood there for a moment in silence, thinking more about what hadn't been said than what had.

'And I never said . . . thanks for lookin' after me.' He opened his arms in an invite for a hug, and she readily accepted.

'Doctor . . . Martha,' a voice called to them, and they released their hug to turn and see who had called them.

'Tim-Timothy-Tim-ah,' the Doctor said in a friendly greeting. It was one of the boys from the school, Timothy Latimer. He had a latent telepathic ability, which had helped him to hear the Chameleon Arch Watch, and keep it safe until it needed to be opened. Without him, the Family of Blood may have found the Doctor, and the watch.

Joan had read John Smiths journal, which was really the Doctor's residual awareness leaking through the disguise, and she had seen that if they had the watch, then it would all end in destruction, that the Family would live forever, breeding and conquering for war, across the universe.

'I just wanted to say goodbye, and thank you . . . because I've seen the future and I now know what must be done.' He'd had a vision from the watch, a vision of him fighting in the trenches, of a falling munitions shell, at one minute past seven. 'It's coming, isn't it . . . ? The biggest war ever.'

'You don't have to fight,' Martha said.

'I think we do.' He may have been just a boy, but his vision had taught him that some things are worth fighting for.

'But you could get hurt,' she told him.

'Well, so could you, travelling around with him, but it's not going to stop you,' he replied. He'd seen the Doctor in the watch, all fire and ice and rage. Like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun, ancient and forever. Burning at the centre of time, seeing the turn of the universe . . . He was magnificent.

Martha smiled at that, what could she say? He was right.

'Tim, I'd be honoured if you'd take this.' The Doctor held out the fob watch.

'I can't hear anything,' he said, there were no more voices whispering in his head.

'No, it's just a watch now . . . but keep it with you, for good luck.' The Doctor knew that the watch had an important part to play in Tim's future.

Martha stepped forward and hugged him. 'Look after yourself.'

Tim was slightly embarrassed when she kissed him on the cheek; after all, he was just a lad. She went back up the hill and stepped into the TARDIS.

'You'll like this bit,' the Doctor said with a knowing smile, before following Martha inside and closing the door. He walked up the ramp and started the time rotor.

'Do you think he'll be alright . . . Timothy?'

'What, young Latimer? Yeah, he'll be fine.' He stopped the time rotor. 'Do you want to see,' he said, smiling and nodding at the doors.

She looked at the doors, and back at the Doctor. 'Really?'

'Eleven o'clock, Sunday November the eleventh, 1990,' he said, as he shut down the console. 'You might want to put on a smart jacket.'

Wearing a suitably smart black jacket, Martha took his arm as they walked through a tranquil village.

'Hold on,' she said as they passed a newsagent. She went inside, and came out holding up two red poppies.

'Wouldn't be right without wearing one of these.' She started to pin one on her lapel as they walked towards the village green and the war memorial.

'Martha Jones,' he said with a smile. 'What would I do without you?'

'Die, most likely,' she said without thinking.

They stopped at the edge of the green, and he thought about that as he looked over towards the assembled group of people.

'Yeah . . . but today's a day for remembering, not for dying,' he said with his hands in his pockets. 'Those who have died . . . and those who are no longer with us.'

She started to pin the poppy on his lapel, and looked up into his eyes. She knew who he was remembering, a lost love who was no longer with him.

'So where's Tim then?'

'The chap in the wheelchair; ninety four years old, the last of his company.'

'Blimey, I don't think I'll ever get used to this. Just five minutes ago, I was kissing his fresh faced cheek . . . Oh look, he's still got the watch.'

'Of course, saved his life that watch did.'

'What, did it stop a bullet or something?'

'Nah that only happens in the movies; this was a bomb.' He saw her puzzled expression. 'When the watch was the Chameleon Arch, it showed him when to duck . . . always useful that . . . knowing when to duck.'

They turned to listen to the service being read by the local vicar. 'They fell with their faces to the foe. They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them.'

* * *

'Are you alright?' Martha asked him, as they walked up the ramp to the console. 'When you're a time traveller, can't you go back like that and see the people you've known before?'

He leaned on the console and gave her a sad smile. How he'd love to go back, take Rose's hand, and lead her away from Canary Wharf.

'It doesn't work like that unfortunately. Crossing into your own timeline can have dangerous consequences. That stunt I pulled when we first met was fairly safe, because you didn't really know who I was, if I did it again, the whole of our reality could collapse.'

She blew out a breath. 'And how do you live with that?'

'The same way anyone does, you accept the fact that you will lose people in the course of your life, and live in the moment, trying to make a difference until it's your turn to be lost.'

That left her lost for words as she thought about what he said. He was right of course, even with a time machine, you are born, you live, and you die.

'Anywayyyy, enough of this remembering, let's go make some new memories, what'd you say?'

'Sounds good to me,' she said with a smile. 'I'll just go and get changed.'

As she left the console room, she heard him muttering about getting somewhere in time, to save someone from terrible danger. And when she returned from her room, she stood back as the Doctor whirled around the central control console like the cartoon Tasmanian Devil.

She had only been travelling with him for a short time, but she knew that when his behaviour was as frenetic as it was now, the best thing was to stand back and wait until he calmed down.

She had changed in to a tight-fitting T-shirt, slim-cut jeans and boots. The outfit was a practical one, she had found, for racketing about the universe in the Doctor's time-spacecraft.

The Doctor's activities seemed to be coming to an end, as the glowing central column on the console slid to a halt. The deafening hullabaloo of the engines suddenly faded away. The Doctor picked up a handy toffee hammer and gave the panel closest to him a hefty wallop, as if for luck.

Martha frowned and then smiled at this. Sometimes it seemed to her the Doctor operated more by luck than logic, yet still he seemed to get away with it. There was something irresistible about his enthusiasm and general haphazardness that just made her grin.

'Have we got there in time?' she asked him.

He whirled around now and caught her laughing at him. He raised a sharp eyebrow at her and pointed to the dancing lights of the console. 'Yes! Just in time! I think.' He stopped. 'In time for what?' He ran his hands distractedly through his tangled dark hair.

'I don't know,' she said. 'You muttered something about saving somebody, or something. And getting there in time. Some awful kind of danger . . .'

'That's it!' he cried. 'I hadn't realised I'd told you so much about it already.' Now he was haring off round the console again.

'Hardly anything,' she protested. 'What kind of danger?'

His head popped up over the console and his expression was very serious, bathed in the green and satsuma orange glow of the TARDIS interior. 'The Voracious Craw,' he said, very solemnly.

'I see,' she said.

'Ooooh, they're a terrible lot,' he said, gabbling away twenty to the dozen. 'Each one is the size of a vast spaceship. They just go sailing about with their mouths hanging open, devouring things. Devouring everything they come across. They look just like, I dunno, gigantic inflated tapeworms or something. Only much worse. If your planet attracts a Voracious Craw into your orbit . . . well. I don't hold out much hope. No sirree. They just go . . . GLLOOMMPP! And that's the end of you. That's the end of everything. They're just so . . . voracious, you see.'

Martha gulped. 'My planet? They're heading for Earth?'

'What?' His eyes boggled at her. 'Are they?'

'You said . . .'

'Nononononono,' he yelled. 'I never said your planet. I said a planet, any planet. You really should stop being so . . . Earth-centric, Martha. I'm showing you the, whatsitcalled, cosmos here, you know.'

'Which world then?' she asked him, quite used to these rather infuriating lapses in his concentration.

A picture of a pale green, frozen world appeared on the scanner screen. 'This one,' said the Doctor, jamming his glasses onto his face.

Every single facial muscle was contorted into an almighty frown as he gazed at the implacable planet. 'We're in orbit. Around somewhere called . . . ah yes. Tiermann's World. Named after its only settlers. Never heard of it.'

'And this Voracious thing is headed towards it?'

The Doctor stabbed a long finger at a grey blob that Martha had taken to be a featureless land mass. 'There it is. Circling the world. Chomping its way through continents.'

'But it's huge!' she cried.

'And, according to the instruments, it's heading towards the only human settlement on that whole planet. They've got about thirty-six hours.' He whipped off his glasses, jammed them into the top pocket of his pinstriped suit and flashed her a grin. 'What do you reckon to whizzing down there and tipping them off, eh? They might not even know they're about to be gobbled up by a massive . . . flying tapeworm nasty space thingy.'

His hands were scurrying over the controls again, before she could even reply. The vworping brouhaha of the ship's engines drowned out any thoughts she might have aired at this point. Instead Martha peered at what she could see on the screen of the Voracious Craw, and imagined what it would look like from down on the surface. What it would be like to gaze up into the mouth of a creature that could eat whole worlds . . .

She was jerked out of her reverie by the Doctor tapping her briskly on her shoulder. 'C'mon, We've got vital stuff to do, you know. People to warn. Lives to save.' He paused and stared at the console for a moment. Martha wasn't sure if she was imagining it, but the constant burbling noise of the myriad instruments sounded somewhat different.

'Hmmm,' said the Doctor. 'She doesn't sound very happy. Too close to the Voracious Craw. It doesn't do to get too close to one of those. They can have some very strange and debilitating effects.'

'Oh, great,' said Martha.

'We'd best get on,' the Doctor said. 'The TARDIS will be OK. I hope.'

He patted the controls consolingly, and then hurried out.

Martha followed him down the gantry to the white wooden doors of the TARDIS. She was bracing herself for what they were about to face out there, but at the same time she was exhilarated. Wherever they wound up, it was never, ever dull. Literally anything could happen, once they stepped through those narrow doors and into a new time and place.

The Doctor was striding ahead and she knew that his eagerness was not just about saving the human settlers. He was also quite keen on seeing this Voracious Craw about its terrible work. 'They're quite rare, these days, you know, our Voracious pals,' he said, grasping the door handle. 'Even I haven't seen an awful lot of the nasty things. Not properly close up, anyway.' He grinned jauntily and stepped outside onto the frozen grass of the glade. 'Ah,' he said.

Martha stepped past him. 'What is it?'

He nodded at the bulky form of the female sabre-toothed tiger before them. She was ready to spring. Her low-throated growl made the very air tremble. She was baring her fangs and one of them, Martha noticed absurdly, was broken. Her glittering green eyes pinned the time travellers to the spot and there was no malice nor enmity there. Just hunger.

'Whoops,' said the Doctor.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

The Doctor and his friends covered their ears. The noise was terrific. Martha felt as if her eardrums were going to explode. Every organ inside each of their bodies was vibrating fit to burst. The ground was quaking and shaking underneath them.

All around them bruited the horrendous, continuous noise of the biggest belch ever recorded. An almighty eructation was ripping out across the land. Martha was ducking down beside Solin Tiermann, the teenage son of Professor Ernest Tiermann who had owned the planet, and now lay dead with his cybernetic wife and the robots he had created.

She watched the Doctor striding about, laughing madly, hands clamped to his ears. Then she looked up at the horrendous underbelly of the Voracious Craw. The effect of their recording on the creature was astonishing. Its mouth had clamped shut, ending the tornadic feeding vortex.

The forest lay still beneath it. The vegetation that had started to lift away from the ground slumped back down into place. The Craw was simply hovering ineffectually as the sound waves echoed through the valley.

Martha hurried over to the Doctor and tugged on his coat sleeve. She tried to ask him what was happening, and why the Craw had stopped. But the noise was too fierce for them to say anything to each other.

She could only watch, with the Doctor, Solin and Barbara the vending machine, as the Voracious Craw gradually changed its mind. And changed its direction. It was backing up, rather slowly, with all the grace of a massive cruise liner doing a U-turn in the middle of a stormy ocean.

Still the noise rang out. Slowed down, altered, looped like that . . . their belches did sound horrific. Like the cries of some ancient, primeval beast . . .

Now the Doctor was springing up and down on his toes. He was jumping for joy and waving his hands in the air. Martha still couldn't hear what he was shouting. But one thing was plain. Something was happening that had never happened before.

The Voracious Craw was going. It was turning away and growing smaller as it slipped into the upper atmosphere. It was leaving Tiermann's World behind. Never before, in the history of this monstrous race, had one of the Voracious Craw left behind a meal unfinished . . .

Once he was quite sure that the Craw was going, the Doctor turned to hug his companions. And when she was crushed to him and he was yelling right down her ear, then Martha could at last hear what he was saying: 'We did it! We sent it away! We saved the world, Martha! We saved the world again!'

They let Solin take one last look around the ruins of the only home he had ever known. It was called Dreamhome, a completely automated building, staffed by robots and controlled by a malign central computer called Domovoi. The Doctor and Martha were waiting for him by the TARDIS.

'So . . . the noise we were making,' Martha said. 'It was just like the sound of an even bigger and even more Voracious Craw?'

'That's exactly how that creature heard it,' the Doctor nodded. He was still drinking pop. He had somehow acquired a taste for the sticky, sugary stuff and now Barbara's supply was almost depleted. Not that

Barbara was complaining. With not so many bottles clunking around inside her, she felt lighter, and freer than she had in years.

'And our Voracious Craw backed off and went away, because it thought that a bigger Craw had first dibs on the planet?'

'Hmmm,' the Doctor said. 'They are a dreary bunch of witless bullies, I'm afraid. And they give in very easily, when someone bigger and stronger comes along. Like all bullies do. All we had to do was stand up to it.'

'We scared the hell out of it,' Martha laughed.

'That's another way of putting it,' the Doctor grinned. 'Was that a medical diagnosis, Doctor Jones?'

'You bet your monstrous eructations on it, Doctor.'

He unlocked the TARDIS door for her. 'Shall we tell the others it's time to go?'

She nodded towards Solin, who was still striding about thoughtfully in the blackened rubble. 'It'll be hard for him.'

'He'll be OK. He's a resilient kid. And he'll fit right in on Spaceport Antelope Slash Nitelite. It's a real ragbag of displaced persons and interesting types. Quite a fascinating place, really. I reckon Barbara will enjoy it there, too. She's had far too sheltered a life. She'll look after Solin.'

They watched Barbara ambling up to the TARDIS, and Martha couldn't help seeing a similarity with the robot from the television series "Lost in Space", where it would wave its arms about saying "warning Will Robinson", although that robot didn't have a front vending compartment displaying a number of consumable items.

The robot had a spring in her step. She looked as elated as a vending machine ever could. 'I'm ready, Doctor, Martha,' she said. 'I've said my goodbyes. To Toaster, to everyone else.' She was referring to all the robots in the house that had perished.

Toaster was a sun bed that had helped the Doctor to defeat the Domovoi, only after it had been forced to kill the professor, destroying itself in the process.

'And the Domovoi?' the Doctor asked her.

'I think she's gone,' Barbara said, frowning. 'I can't detect her anywhere in the remains of the Dreamhome. I think she's gone deep, deep underground.'

The Doctor stared at Barbara and nodded solemnly. For a second he allowed himself to wonder: what if she was lying? She had been connected to the Domovoi, after all. What if – even unbeknownst to Barbara herself – the Domovoi had secreted some small part of her malign intelligence inside the circuits of the vending robot? And what if she managed to get herself away from Tiermann's World? What if she managed to smuggle herself away, inside Barbara, and into the galaxy at large?

The Doctor waved the thought away. He was getting much too suspicious. Always thinking and expecting the worst. No, the Domovoi was gone. And it was time for them to leave, too.

'I think I'm ready, Doctor. To explore the universe,' Barbara said brightly.

The Doctor was watching as Solin turned his back on his wrecked and burning world. There was nothing left here for him now. The boy was turning and walking towards the TARDIS, ready to be swept away and taken into a different time and place.

The Doctor smiled at Barbara. 'It's completely marvellous, exploring the universe,' he told her. 'Everyone should try it. Eh, Martha?'

'Too right,' she said, and led the way into the ship. Martha was secretly glad that they were dropping off Barbara and Solin at that spaceport. They were all very nice and everything, but she was happiest when it was just her and the Doctor. Smith and Jones. At home in the universe.

Spaceport Antelope Slash Nitelite, reminded Martha of Mos Iesley Spaceport in Star Wars. It was a bustling, cosmopolitan collection of all manner of alien life forms.

She was standing at the door of the TARDIS with Barbara and Solin, while the Doctor messed with an illuminated panel on the wall opposite. When he returned, he put his sonic screwdriver back in his pocket and held out two plastic strips.

'There we are, these should give you a good start,' he said handing them to Barbara and Solin.

'What have you done?' Martha asked suspiciously. 'Don't tell me you've robbed the bank?'

He looked insulted. 'Of course not! I just hacked into Tiermann's account and transferred the funds onto these credit sticks. After all, Solin is his son and heir, and Barbara is now his legal guardian.'

'Oh yeah, that's right,' Martha said with a smile, and finally fulfilled one of Solin wishes. She kissed him, not on the lips as he'd dreamed of, but on the cheek. 'Don't spend it all at once.'

'He won't,' Barbara said firmly, but with a hint of humour as well.

The Doctor clapped his hands together. 'Who better than a vending machine to teach him the price of goods and the value of money? Come on Martha, time we were on our way.'

They said their goodbyes before stepping into the TARDIS and fading away from Spaceport Antelope Slash Nitelite.

* * *

'So,' said Martha, folding her arms and leaning against the handrail that ran around the central console of the time machine. 'Flying the TARDIS. What's all that about, then?'

Since her first journey with the Doctor, when he'd taken her to see Will Shakespear in 1599, she'd been trying to get a straight answer from the Doctor on how the TARDIS worked and how it travelled through time.

"But how do you travel in time? What makes it go?" she'd asked him.

"Oh, let's take the fun and mystery out of everything. Martha, you don't want to know. It just does," he'd told her.

From beneath her feet, muffled by the grating on which she stood and the weird-looking electronic tool held in his mouth, the Doctor said: 'Mphhhpphh . . . mmm . . . mppppffhfhf.'

Martha nodded wisely. 'That's all well and good,' she said. 'But it doesn't really answer my question, does it?'

She dropped, cat-like, to her knees and pressed her face against the floor, squinting to see exactly what the Doctor was doing, down in the bowels of the TARDIS. 'I said –'

'I heard what you said!' snapped back the Doctor, yanking the thing out of his mouth with a scowl. 'But what you don't understand is –' And he shoved it back between his teeth and mphphphed a bit more, this time with added emphasis, until Martha shook her head exasperatedly and stood up.

She wandered around the console, covered with what looked like the contents of a particularly poor car boot sale. There were brass switches, a bicycle pump and something that looked like one of those paperweights with bubbles in it.

She was wondering exactly what any of these weird objects had to do with flying through time and space when she suddenly found the Doctor standing in front of her, sonic screwdriver in hand, his hair all ruffled and askew.

'Well?'

'Um . . . yeah,' replied Martha cagily, wondering what he was on about. 'Probably.'

'Good!'

And he was off, racing past her, around to the other side of the console, where he grabbed the paperweight and gave it a delicate tweak. All around her, the subtle burblings and electronic grumblings of the TARDIS changed key ever so slightly, settling into something much more comfortable. Martha followed him, watching as he fiddled and faddled with the junk set into the console's luminous green surface.

'What I was saying before . . .' she ventured, watching his narrowed eyes.

'Yes,' he said, nodding firmly. 'Croissants. For breakfast. Definitely. We'll pop over to Cannes and pick a –'

'Not the croissants,' she interrupted.

'No problem. Porridge is fine by me. Edinburgh – 1807. Fine vintage.'

'I'm not talking about breakfast.'

He jolted upright, as if he'd received an electric shock, and turned to her, eyes wide and manic. 'You mean its lunchtime?' He glanced at his watch, frowned, shook it and then placed it to his ear. 'Why didn't you tell me?' He rolled his eyes and slipped the sonic screwdriver into the breast pocket of his dark-brown suit. 'I've been down there for hours.'

'You've been down there for fifteen minutes.'

He opened his mouth to say something, but quick as lightning Martha clamped her hand over it. 'What I'm trying to tell you,' she said with slow and forced patience, taking her hand away. 'What I've been trying to tell you for three days now, is that you ought to let me know how the TARDIS works – and if not how it actually works, how it operates. How you operate it.'

She ignored the muffled protestations and the wiggled eyebrows. 'I mean – all I want is some basic lessons, yeah? Just "Press this button to get us out of danger; press this button to sound an alarm; press that button to get BBC Three." That kind of thing.'

Martha folded her arms again and leaned back against the console, putting on her most reasonable voice. 'Now that's not too much to ask, is it? And it would help you too – you wouldn't have to be hovering over this thing twenty-four seven.' She patted the console behind her.

The Doctor puckered up his lips thoughtfully, reached into his pocket, pulled out the sonic screwdriver and shoved it back in his mouth. 'Mpfhphfhhff,' he said.

She reached out and pulled the device from him, extracting an indignant Ooof! along with it.

'You think I'm too thick, don't you!'

He just stared at her – actually, he just stared at the sonic screwdriver. Martha looked down at it, hanging between her fingertips, and pulled a face at the dribble on it before handing it gingerly back to him. She pointed at her own chest with her free hand.

'Medical student, remember?' she said. 'A levels.'

The Doctor raised an eyebrow.

'Driving licence,' she added.

The other eyebrow joined the first one. 'Martha, Martha, Martha,' he said patronisingly, making her instantly want to slap him. 'Operating the TARDIS isn't about intelligence. It's not about pressing this button, then pulling that lever. It's much more difficult than that.' He reached out and stroked the curved, ceramic edge of the console. 'It's about intuition and imagination; it's about feeling your way through the Time Vortex.'

'It's about kicking it when it doesn't work, is what it's about.'

He pulled a hurt little boy face.

'Don't start that,' she warned, a smile twitching the corner of her mouth upwards. 'I've heard you, when you think I'm not around, stomping and banging the console.'

'Well there you go then!' he said triumphantly, as if that settled the matter. 'It's about stomping and banging your way through the Time Vortex!'

He turned away, stowing the sonic screwdriver back in his pocket (after, Martha noted with a grimace, wiping it clean on the sleeve of his jacket again). 'Intelligence is overrated, Martha – believe you me. I'd take an ounce of heart over a bucketful of brains any day.'

'Oooh!' mocked Martha. 'Bet you're a whizz in the kitchen!'

The Doctor's eyes lit up again. 'And talking about food . . . who's up for breakfast? All that talk of croissants is makin' me mighty hungry.' He stretched out his right hand. 'And this here hand is a butterin' hand! How d'you fancy breakfast at Tiffany's?'

Martha's mouth dropped open. 'Tiffany's? You mean the real Tiffany's? As in Breakfast at?'

'Where else?' the Doctor beamed back, looking extremely pleased with himself.

'Nice one!' said Martha, a huge grin on her face. 'This is the kind of time and space travelling I signed up for! Although,' she added, 'I'm beginning to suspect you've got a bit of a thing about New York, you know.'

And with that, she was gone.

'New York?'

The Doctor stood in the console room, watching Martha vanish in the direction of the TARDIS's wardrobe. A puzzled frown wrinkled his brow. New York? Why had Martha mentioned New York when he was taking her to Tiffany's near the Robot Regent's palace on Arkon?

'Must have misheard her,' he decided, tapping at the controls on the console and flicking a finger at what Martha would undoubtedly have thought was just a small, brass, one-eyed owl.

Blue-green light pulsed up and down the column at the centre of the console and a deep groaning filled the air, settling down as the TARDIS shouldered its way out of the Time Vortex into the real world. 'Perfect,' the Doctor said to himself. 'Textbook landing. Like to see Martha manage a landing as textbook perfect as that!'

'Ahhh . . .' said the Doctor out loud, somewhat surprised at quite how warm, wet and, well, swampy Arkon had become since his last visit. And slippery. Because as he stepped from the TARDIS, the sole of his foot skidded on a moss-covered root beneath him, and it was only by grabbing onto the TARDIS's doorframe that he managed to stop himself from ending up on the muddy ground.

The air hit him like a huge, damp blanket. He stood there, one foot still inside the TARDIS, the other hovering a cautious six inches from the ground, and wondered what had gone wrong. Arkon should have been a prosperous, advanced, Earth-like world. Right about now, a hot, F-type star should have been beating down on him, and his senses should have been assailed by the smells, sounds and scents of technology run riot.

But, instead, all around him was a languid silence, punctuated by the occasional sound of splashing water. And the only smells were the fusty smells of swamp gas and damp. A green smell. He liked green smells – full of vim and vigour and vegetables.

'Ummm . . .' he added, looking out over the oily water that stretched away from the steeply sloping bank where the TARDIS had plonked itself. At the other side, a couple of hundred metres away, shaggy trees lowered their branches almost to the water, like a floppy fringe. And through the canopy of leaves above him, an orange-red sun blistered the purplish sky.

'This is just a teensy bit wrong,' he said to himself.

Ferreting around in the TARDIS's wardrobe for something ultra-glamand ultra-chic to wear to Tiffany's (think Audrey Hepburn, she reminded herself, think Hollywood glamour), she just knew that the Doctor would be standing in the console room, tapping his foot impatiently.

Well he could just wait. It wasn't often that a girl got to do sophistication when travelling with the Doctor. Jeans, her red leather jacket and stout boots had been the order of the day recently, and she wasn't passing up this chance to shine. She rooted around for a slinky frock and let out a triumphant 'Yes!' when she found a lilac silk dress and some matching elbow-length gloves with pearl cuffs.

In seconds, she'd slipped into them and was twirling and preening in front of the mirror. The frock, it had to be said, was a wee bit tight on her. But if she breathed in – and didn't breathe out too much – it'd do. Shoes were a bit trickier, but she found a pair of silver strappy sandals that just about fitted.

'Knock 'em dead, girl!' she told herself as, with a final tweak of her hair, she bounded out of the wardrobe, ready for her disgustingly decadent breakfast. At Tiffany's.

The Doctor was tempted to assume that something had gone very wrong with Arkon's sun, and that it had caused a massive change in the planet's ecosystem, turning it from high-tech paradise to swamp world.

He was tempted to think that maybe the Arkonides had been messing with solar modifiers and had mutated their star into the orange ball that hung over him. Or that some attacking alien race had done the fiddling for them in an attempt to wipe the Arkonides out. In fact he was very tempted to think anything except the one thing that really seemed most likely.

He leaned back into the cool interior of the TARDIS. 'Have you been messing with those controls again?' he shouted to Martha. But not quite loudly enough for her to hear. Because of course Martha hadn't been messing with the controls. And the Doctor knew it.

He shook his head ruefully and ventured his foot out onto the mossy tree root, snaggled and sprawled out of the bank like a deformed Twiglet.

'Must get those gyroceptors fixed,' he muttered.

Cautiously, he tested the root with his weight, and it held. The slipperiness was more of a problem: he had to hang on to the TARDIS's doorframe as he shifted his weight onto his outstretched foot. Carefully, he brought the other foot out and found a safe-ish place for it.

Finally, he leaned onto it. 'There!' he beamed at his own cleverness. 'Wasn't so difficult, was –'

With all the comedic grace of one of the Chuckle Brothers, the Doctor began to flail his hands around as his left foot started to slip and slide on the root. And as his other foot decided to join in the fun, he began windmilling his arms frantically, jacket flapping around him.

Seconds later, as he felt himself begin to fall, he instinctively grabbed for the open doorway to the TARDIS. Which was a big mistake. The TARDIS might have been a pretty solid, pretty hefty thing, despite its external dimensions. But it was as subject to the same forces of physics – and friction – as he was. And despite the fact that it had squashed the roots underneath it when it had landed, they were still very slippery roots.

It was, thought the Doctor ruefully as his time and space ship began to move, a bit like launching a battleship. Only without a bottle of champagne smashed against the side of it. With a creak and groan of roots and a deep squelch of mud, the TARDIS began to slide down the bank towards the water, and the Doctor again began to lose his balance. In fact, in accidentally pushing against the TARDIS, not only had he sent it down the natural runway that the roots provided, but he'd pushed himself in the opposite direction.

'Wellingtons!' was the only thing he managed to cry out to Martha as he landed flat on his back in a spray of muddy water. He lifted himself up on his elbows just in time to see his beloved TARDIS pause at the edge of the swamp before it tipped, almost as if it were waving him goodbye. And in majestic slow motion, the blue box keeled over.

There was an almighty splash, drenching the Doctor with warm, silty water, a brief gush of bubbles and a massive wave that spread out across the swamp. And then the TARDIS was gone.

'Wellingtons,' he repeated in a disbelieving whisper. 'Don't forget your Wellingtons, Martha.'


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

Martha stared, puzzled, unable to understand what she was looking at. What was the poison dart shot into the Doctor's leg, doing to the tentacles of the swamp creature?

Cloudiness began to spread along the tentacles from the area of the Doctor's head, like a wave, radiating outwards. It spread down as far as the Doctor's feet, still protruding, almost comically, from the alien flesh.

And then, with a horrid ripping sound, the creature's tendril burst, showering her with warm, slimy goo, and the Doctor fell heavily to the ground, gasping and choking.

Professor Ty Benson was at his side instantly, with the teenaged colonists Orlo and Candice just a second behind, pulling the stuff from his face and out of his mouth. Martha just knelt there, stunned, as he coughed the alien muck up.

Behind him, the massive bulk of the swamp creature's tendril had flopped to the ground, thrashing and writhing. It smacked against the side of the building, spattering it with dark slime.

Martha watched as the wave of frostiness continuing to spread out over its surface, back towards the creature's body, hidden in the water; more and more of the alien's body fluids pumped out across the soil, like an out-of control garden hose.

There was a dull thud beside her, and she turned to see Chief Councillor Pallister's body sprawled out on the ground like a discarded toy: the tendrils that had supported it had burst, and greeny-black ichor was gushing everywhere.

Then Candy was beside her, helping her to her feet, and Orlo and Ty were dragging the Doctor away from the dying alien. When they were clear of the spurting, bubbling fluid, Ty and Orlo lay the Doctor on the ground. Martha rushed to his side and cradled his slime-covered body in her arms.

He coughed in her ear and tried to push her away. But Martha was having none of it. She held onto him until Ty gently prised her away.

'I'm not sure which was worse,' the Doctor choked, trying to sit up, wiping his face with his hands. 'Being smothered by slimey, or being smothered by you.' He looked up at her and grinned stupidly. 'Actually,' he said. 'It was no contest. Hello, Martha – you don't half look different through green glasses, you know.' And then he fainted clean away.

'But why didn't the poison kill him?' Martha said as she finished wiping the slime from his face.

'It wasn't a poison,' Ty said, tossing the tranquilliser gun to the ground and fixing it with a look of disgust.

'But it killed that thing – didn't it?'

'Actually,' said the Doctor muzzily, opening his eyes. 'I'm rather afraid you'll find that I killed it.'

'So what was in the dart?' Martha was confused.

'A rather clever little solution of RNA.' He sat up and rubbed the back of his head – before examining the goo on his hand and pulling a disgusted face. Before Martha could stop him, he sniffed his hand and gave it a lick. 'Ew!' he said. 'Needs more salt.'

'Stop it,' Martha chided, slapping his hand away from his face.

'What did you do?'

'Well it all seems a bit obvious now.'

'Not to me it doesn't. Stop being smug.'

He peered past her to where the remains of the creature were nothing more than a huge, dark stain on the ground. Shreds of greeny black flesh lay all around like the tattered pieces of a burst balloon.

'Slimey, there, controlled other organisms with proteins – injected them into them along with RNA to transfer memories and images. So it occurred to me that it might work the other way round: if I could get the right proteins and RNA inside it, I might be able to, well, mess about with its metabolism a bit.'

'I told him it was dangerous,' insisted Ty, like a mother telling off a naughty child and trying to absolve herself of some guilt. 'I warned him.'

'She did,' the Doctor admitted. 'That's why I couldn't tell you, Martha – I knew you'd stop me.'

'So this RNA . . . I mean . . .' Martha was at a loss for words. This was all coming too thick and too fast. 'How?'

'The marvellous Doctor-o-tronic!' he beamed up at her. 'I told you I was the best biological computer around. I had to make direct contact with the creature to be able to work on its metabolism – that's why I offered it the TARDIS.'

His expression became suddenly more serious as he thought about the leader of the Colony. Chief Councillor Pallister had been drowned by the alien and used as its puppet. 'I knew it wouldn't be able to resist and that it would try to take control of me like it did poor old Pallister. But I had to give it the option. There always has to be a way out. Just a shame that people don't take it when it's offered.'

He shrugged. 'Ah well. Anyway, it's had so much practice now that it knew exactly what to do with me. Well, it thought it did. It started to invade my body, and when it did. I invaded its body and reprogrammed the RNA string that Ty injected into me to destroy its outer membranes.' He grinned again, back to his jokey self. 'Didn't they teach you anything at medical school?'

'He couldn't have injected it into himself earlier,' Ty said. 'In case it broke down too quickly – or the creature detected it and neutralised it. It had to be at the very last minute.' Ty sighed and shook her head. 'I'm sorry I frightened you Martha, honey, really I am.'

Martha shook her head. If it hadn't worked . . .' You ever do that again,' she said sternly to him, 'and you really will need a doctor. Believe me.'

'Your bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired, Miss Jones,' he smiled. 'But you're getting there. One day you'll make a great doctor.'

'With you about,' said Martha, shaking her head, 'who needs another one?'

* * *

'And I take it, Professor Benson, that there's going to be no more capturing and caging the jubjubs?' the Doctor said as they walked back to the colonist's settlement.

'The what?' said Martha.

'The otters,' said Ty firmly, referring to the semi-intelligent, indigenous life forms that had helped them defeat the swamp creature alien.

The Doctor pulled an I-give-up face. He thought humans had more imagination than to just give a new species a name because it looked like something similar.

'No, there isn't,' Ty finished, in answer to his question. 'If I'd known they were as smart as that, I'd never have done it in the first place. And talking! How come I never heard them talk before?'

The Doctor threw a glance at Martha. 'Blame us for that one,' he said. 'You might find that when we're gone, they're not quite so chatty.' Without the TARDIS's influence, the otter's words would just become chattering noises again.

'But there's nothing to stop you from trying. Come up with a completely new language, something you both can understand: imagine how that'd go down in the history books. You could call it Tyrellian. Or Ottyrellian.'

He paused and pulled a lemon-sucking face. 'Nah. Maybe not. Just show them a bit of respect – after all, they were here first – and who knows . . . ? This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.'

'Something you know all about, eh, Doctor?' Martha caught Ty's eye as she said it, and smiled.

'Oh yes,' said the Doctor breezily. 'Beautiful friendships. You can never have enough of those, can you, Martha?'

'No, Doctor,' said Martha dutifully, returning Ty's smile, 'you can't.'

Martha and Ty fell back a little as Candy and the Doctor strode ahead.

'High maintenance,' Ty said, indicating the Doctor.

Martha laughed. 'You said it.'

'But worth it, honey.'

'You reckon?' Martha said. "Not with the ghost of his ex still haunting the TARDIS" she thought.

Ty pulled a face. 'You don't?'

Martha could only shrug, smiling.

'Trust your instincts,' Ty said. 'Isn't that what the Doctor told Candy? Just trust your instincts. That's all any of us can do.' And striding into Sunday City, Martha felt Ty's arm across her shoulders in a motherly fashion.

The group arrived at the TARDIS, and they said their goodbyes. Ty caught Martha's eye and subtly nodded at the Doctor with a smirk. The Doctor had spotted the gesture and was giving Martha a quizzical look.

Martha blushed and looked down at her feet, before looking back at Ty and shaking her head in resignation. Martha did trust her instincts, and they'd kept her alive this long. And although her instincts told her that she was in love with the Doctor, her instincts also told her that he was still in love with Rose.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows in amusement, thinking this was some kind of woman-gossiping-kind-of-thing, before opening the door of the TARDIS and stepping inside. Martha strolled up the ramp behind him, looking down at the weird, shapeless orange kaftan thing, loaned to her by Ty.

'Not quite the elegant gown I started with, is it?' He beautiful gown had been ripped and ruined when the swamp alien had pulled her out of the TARDIS.

'Because we didn't get breakfast at Tiffany's,' the Doctor said as he sent the TARDIS into the Vortex. 'I think that we should have a day of whistle stop tours.'

'What, like they do on those river cruises, stopping off at each town on the way?'

'That's the idea, what d'you think?'

'Sounds good to me,' Martha said with an expectant smile.

He fiddled and twiddled the controls in his normal flamboyant style, as Martha made her way to her room to freshen up.

Their first stop of the cruise was breakfast in Rome. The year was 1510,and they were in a 16th century version of a street cafe in the Piazza de San Pietro in Vincoli. The Doctor had brought Martha here deliberately, because he knew that a friend of his called in for breakfast before starting work around the corner in the Sistine Chapel.

She had dressed in a peach coloured period gown, and was enjoying a 16th century version of a cappuccino and a 16th century version of a croissant. It might not have been Tiffany's, but being in renaissance Rome was certainly glamorous.

'DOTTORE!' a young, dark haired man called out from across the street. 'I thought it was you.'

'Mike? Mike Landzelo!' the Doctor exclaimed, jumping up from his seat and hugging the man. 'Long time, no see . . . it has been a long time hasn't it?'

'It must be three years now since you used my workshop to sculpt that statue of the goddess Fortuna. How did that go, did the client like it?'

'What was not to like?' the Doctor said with a grin.

'Sì, whoever the model was, she was a belle donna.'

'Goddess Fortuna?' Martha said, rising from her seat with a bemused look on her face.

'Oh what dark beauty do we have here?' Michelangelo said, taking her hand, giving an extravagant bow, before kissing her knuckle. 'Your next model no doubt.'

'Mikey, may I introduce my travelling companion, Martha Jones. Martha, this is Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, but you might know him as just Michelangelo.'

'Michelangelo? You are SO kiddin' me.'

'At your service my ebony goddess.'

'Er, pleased to meet you,' Martha said with a shy smile before whispering to the Doctor. 'Has he ever met Will Shakespeare?'

'Nah, that doesn't happen for another 70 years or so,' he whispered back. 'So Mikey, how's the interior decorating business?'

Michelangelo joined them at the table with his own cappuccino and pastry, and started chatting. Martha learned that the ceiling of the chapel was about half done and would take another couple of years to finish.

She also learned, with some cajoling, that Michelangelo had tutored the Doctor in sculpting a marble statue. The Doctor reluctantly informed her that it was a previous adventure he'd had in Rome. She didn't need to be a genius to work out who the model was.

Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor set the coordinates for the Vega Opsis system for elevens's and lunch. The Doctor advised Martha to wear her normal clothes for this planet hopping trip, as transparent clothing was the height fashion at the moment on the worlds of Vega Opsis.

Fortunately for Martha, there was plenty of beautiful, futuristic architecture to look at, so that she didn't keep ogling the well fit male inhabitants in their see through clothing. They had coffee and biscuits in a Vega Opsis version of Starbucks, and Martha had to admit that the green, transparent uniform the barista was wearing really complimented her figure.

They went to the top of one of the beautiful spires for lunch, where the restaurant revolved slowly, showing the city below. The Doctor noticed that Martha was really enjoying the view. And to be fair, she was enjoying the view, mainly to stop herself staring at the rather well endowed waiter who was serving their table.

Next, to cool Martha down a bit, they visited the Frozen Castles of the Ice Warriors for afternoon tea. Martha was reminded of the pictures she'd seen of the Ice Hotel in Sweden.

'I know where we can go next,' the Doctor told her, sipping his tea. 'You can meet the dolphin people of Io; not the moon Io, the planet Io. I know this really neat bar, a sort of "Cheers" in outer space.'

'Dolphin people?' Martha asked, thinking this was one of his tales again.

'Yeah, everyone who works in the place is a dolphin, walking around with the aid of sleek mechanical legs and talking with a calm, Stephen Hawking-style electronic voice.'

"Yep, definitely one of his tall tales", Martha thought to herself. When they walked into the really neat bar on Io (the planet, not the moon), her mouth fell open.

'Oh you have got to be kidding me. You . . . you . . . you are just unbelievable.' Sure enough, everyone who worked in the place was a dolphin, walking around with the aid of sleek mechanical legs and talking with a calm, Stephen Hawking-style electronic voice, just as he said they would be.

After a thoroughly enjoyable session of drinking and being chatted up by an amorous dolphin bar tender, Martha decided that the day could best be rounded off by a traditional English cream tea in a quaint, countryside village.

'With scones,' the Doctor announced with his customary enthusiasm. 'We must have scones, with strawberry jam and clotted cream! I know just the place.' And so he'd sent the TARDIS hurtling through the Time Vortex again.

Martha held on and whooped as the TARDIS swerved and swayed its way to their destination in the Peak District.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20  
**

'I wish every day could be like this,' said Martha. She was walking through the woods, occasionally feeling the heat of the sun on her skin as it dropped down through the bright green leaves above, listening to the sound of the birds singing from the branches and the soft buzz of insects in the undergrowth. It was a lovely day to be on Earth.

Martha had visited the past and the future and alien worlds in distant galaxies. She loved her life; she loved seeing new times and places, but she never minded when the TARDIS brought her back home, as it sometimes did, to England in the early twenty-first century. And that was because Martha knew that it didn't really matter where – or when – you found yourself; what mattered was who you were with.

And it was, as Martha had already commented, absolutely perfect. At the moment, she simply couldn't wish for anything better. Welllll . . . she could wish that the Doctor would get over being dumped by his ex and move on. Then he might move on to her instead.

'Be careful what you wish for,' the Doctor commented. His hands were stuffed in the trouser pockets of his pinstriped suit as he strolled along.

'Why?'

He shrugged. 'Well, I can't imagine ever wanting every day to be the same.'

Smiling in agreement, Martha took him by the arm and pulled him closer. 'Come on, you, I'm hungry. It's nearly teatime and I need clotted cream.'

They were walking down a slope of woody earth that led to a narrow road. A short wade through some ferns brought them to a crossroads. There was a signpost.

'Creighton Mere one mile that way,' read Martha, pointing down the road, 'Ickley five miles that way.'

'Which d'you think?' the Doctor asked her. 'I quite like the sound of Ickley.'

'Nearer the better as far as I'm concerned. Let's try Creighton Mere.'

'I'd keep away from that one if I were you,' said an old, dry voice from the roadside.

There was a man sitting on a stile, half hidden by the hedgerow. He was wearing filthy old boots and a worn-out parka. He was old, with weathered brown skin and matted hair, and sharp eyes peering out from beneath bushy grey eyebrows.

'I beg your pardon?' Martha said politely.

'Creighton Mere,' the old man said. 'Wouldn't bother with it if I were you.' At least, that's what she thought he said. It was difficult to tell, because the huge, tangled beard which surrounded his mouth muffled half of what he was saying.

'Why not?' asked the Doctor.

The old man pulled a face, his lips shining wetly. 'It's not a very nice place to live.'

'We don't want to live there,' said Martha. 'We're only visiting.'

'Hmph,' said the man.

'Besides, it's too far to Ickley,' Martha added. 'And we're walking.'

'You're not walkers,' the old man noted. 'You're not dressed for walkin', either of you.' He pointed an old stick at their feet. 'You got nice shoes on, an' he's got trainers. So you must have a car somewhere.'

'We don't have a car,' Martha said.

'We have a police box,' the Doctor added.

The man's eyebrows drew together. 'Police box?'

'Yep. Big blue one, parked back there. It's better for the environment than a car.'

The old man's eyes twinkled at this. 'You could have a point there.'

'So what's wrong with Creighton Mere, anyway?'

The lips pursed inside the beard. 'Nothing much, I suppose,' he said slowly. 'To look at.'

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. 'Well, we're probably not going to do much more than look at it, are we, Martha?'

Martha was about to say that a cup of tea and a slice of cake wouldn't go amiss, but then thought that might sound a bit unfair to a vagrant.

'Please yourselves, then,' the old man said. 'Don't say I didn't warn you.'

'Warn us?' Martha repeated. 'About what?'

'About Creighton Mere.'

'You haven't actually warned us about anything specific.'

'Well, there ain't anything specific I can warn you about. It's more of a feelin'.'

'Ah!' the Doctor nodded as if he understood perfectly.

'What I'm feeling at the moment is hungry,' Martha said. She turned to the Doctor. 'Let's carry on.'

'Just take care of yourselves,' the old man said, not unkindly. 'In Creighton Mere.'

'Thanks, anyway,' Martha said. She gave the man a little wave, and he nodded at her as they turned to go.

'What was all that about?' Martha demanded when they were out of earshot.

'Oh, take no notice,' the Doctor said airily. 'He's probably been moved on by the locals or something and he's got a grudge against the village.'

Martha shivered, remembering the man's sharp little eyes. They had seemed to look right through her at the end, almost as if he was committing every detail of her to memory.

* * *

The Doctor had wandered back towards the old well on the village green, which was now less of a green, and more of a field of churned mud from Angela Hook's Land Rover and ash from the remains of an alien weed-like creature called a Vurosis.

He picked around in the dirt until he found a small rock no bigger than a lump of coal. It was grey and weighed next to nothing.

Henry Gaskin, a local land owner joined him. 'What is it?'

'The remains of the Vurosis brain.' The Doctor clenched his fist and the rock crumbled into powder. 'Gone for ever.' He dusted his hands, and the last fragments of the Vurosis blew away on the night air like smoke across a battlefield. Scattered all around the vicinity of the well were lump of soil and rock and general debris thrown up when the Vurosis died.

'This is a right old mess, isn't it?' Gaskin said quietly.

'Oh, the grass will grow back all right,' replied the Doctor. 'And it looks like the well-shaft is still intact.'

'I'm talking about the people who didn't make it. Nigel Carson, Ben Seddon . . . Old Barney Hackett,' Gaskin explained.

Nigel Carson had been controlled by the Vurosis brain, and killed the old tramp Barney Hackett. Two of Carson's university friends had been helping him dig a tunnel to the base of the well to find what they thought was hidden treasure. In the tunnel, Duncan Goode had undergone transmutagenic alteration by the Vurosis and the proto-Vurosis hybrid Duncan been forced to kill his friend Ben Seddon.

'Oh, yes, I see.' The Doctor heaved a sigh, he'd had experienced this kind of thing before. 'You have to think of the people who did make it,' he said. 'The people whose lives were saved. And there are an awful lot of those, you know.'

Angela arrived, picking her way carefully through the mud with the help of a borrowed torch. 'Martha's checking over the walking wounded, Doctor,' she said. 'And I've had a call from Sadie Brown. She says she's woken up with a terrible hangover in Henry Gaskin's bed. I think she's more traumatised by that than being turned into an alien monster. Or very nearly, at any rate.'

The proto-Vurosis hybrid Duncan, had been sent by the Vurosis to recover its brain from the mansion, and Angela's friend Sadie had gotten in the way and started to transmutate. The Doctor had then flushed the brain down the toilet to save her.

'She says to thank you and can she turn off that blasted screwdriver thing as it's making her headache worse and driving Jess up the wall. Oh, and she says the manor looks like it's been hit by a bomb.'

Duncan had smashed his way down three floors of the manor to find the brain in the sewer, while the Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to hold the transmutagenic alteration at bay.

'Oh, blast,' said Gaskin. 'I'd forgotten about that!'

'It's going to cost you a fortune to get that repaired,' Angela told him bluntly.

He nodded wryly at the remains of the wishing well. 'And what about this? Bit of a setback for the Creighton Mere Wishing Well Restoration Committee, I should say.'

'Oh, blow,' Angela sighed, looking at the well properly. 'Look at the state of it. Sadie will go bonkers.'

The parapet wall was scorched black and the uprights were no more than pieces of splintered wood. Angela peered down the well-shaft and sighed. 'Not much point in making a wish now, is there?'

'Wait a minute. What's this?' The Doctor was prodding at something in the mud with his toe. It was glinting in the light of Angela's torch near the base of the well.

Gaskin picked it up. 'It's a coin, I think.' He rubbed the mud off with his thumb. 'Good grief. It's gold – look!' They all peered closely at the coin.

'That's an eighteenth-century gold sovereign,' said the Doctor carefully.

'And there's more, look,' said Angela excitedly, playing the beam of the torch over the ground by their feet. Golden lights reflected all around them.

'Great Scott!' cried Gaskin. 'I don't believe it!'

Martha came running over at the sound of their excited shouts. The Doctor was bending down, brushing soil from a large, leathery object.

'You're not going to believe this,' he said, holding up an old, dirty leather bag. It was mud-stained and rotted, but clearly full and very heavy. As they watched, more gold coins tumbled out of a hole in the ancient stitching.

'It's the treasure!' yelled Martha. 'It's the highwayman's treasure! It really was down there all the time!'

'No, it's not the treasure,' said Angela happily. 'It's the Creighton Mere Well and Gaskin Manor Restoration Fund!'

The Doctor and Martha stayed on through the night to help collect all the gold sovereigns. Martha had been thinking about the alien as they rummaged through the wreckage.

'So how did it get here then?' she asked the Doctor out of the blue. 'The Vurosis I mean.'

'Oh, it would have been a seed pod falling to Earth like a meteorite. Similar to an Isolus pod that fell to Earth in two thousand and . . .' He stopped talking when he realised that it wouldn't happen for another four years, and Angela and Sadie where listening with interest. Martha saw the sad look flash across his face, and knew it was to do with Rose.

'Any-hoo, it plunged into the soil, or was carried by the underground spring to the well chamber and slowly grew over the centuries. Ooh, here's a few more,' he said, picking some gold coins out of the mud.

Angela used her bush hat to store the coins, and somebody else managed to get their hands on a metal detector to track down the last few pieces lost in the mud. It was an exciting time for everybody, and helped take most people's minds off the terrible events of the evening, at least for a while.

When the police finally arrived, there was little they could do except stare at the muddy village green and scratch their heads. The two constables took statements from a number of people who claimed to be eyewitnesses to an attempted alien invasion of the Earth, starting with Creighton Mere, but in truth the policemen were more confused by the various different accounts of the evening and eventually, finding no actual crime to investigate, they gave up.

And after that, most people did what came naturally: they went back to the pub, taking the two constables with them. Many of them had left drinks unattended, and found them exactly as they had left them.

Henry Gaskin ordered the largest bottle of fizzy white wine the pub stocked – it would have to do instead of champagne – and paid for drinks all round. Even Jess, his Border Collie was treated to a bowl of water by the bar.

Gaskin was elected as Treasurer, a title almost everybody found unaccountably hilarious, and it was unanimously agreed that the proceeds should indeed be used to help rebuild those parts of Gaskin Manor destroyed by the Vurosis, along with a complete re-turfing of the village green, and of course the full and proper restoration of the wishing well. Sadie Brown decided to put her share towards the setting up of a small tea room adjacent to the village green.

'We'll come back and be your first customers,' Martha assured her happily.

'Make sure you do!' Sadie laughed, making a note of Martha's mobile number and promising to call her as soon as she was ready to open.

Sadie returned the Doctor's sonic screwdriver along with a pot of her Thick-Cut Tawny. She thanked him quietly but honestly for saving her life and kissed him on the cheek. Many people in the pub roared and raised their glasses.

'We really think you ought to take a cut of the loot, you know,' Angela said to the Doctor and Martha. 'After all, if it wasn't for you two . . .'

'It belongs to the village,' said the Doctor. 'We don't.'

'Take this as a souvenir, then,' Angela said to Martha. She pressed a single gold sovereign into her hand and then closed Martha's fingers over it like a grandmother giving a child pocket money. 'Keep it for luck!'

Martha gaped. 'I can't take this! It's worth a fortune.'

'So are you, dear, so are you.' She looked meaningfully at the Doctor and winked. 'Take care of her, Doctor, won't you?'

He said that he would, and then, with many more hugs and kisses and handshakes, they took their leave. On the way out of the pub, Martha bumped into Duncan again.

'I thought we had a date?' he said, smiling. 'Or are you just teasing me now?'

She could see that he was smiling through some very grim memories. She took him to one side. 'How are you feeling? Really?'

'I can't believe Ben and Nigel are gone.'

'Nigel brought it all on himself, you know. There was nothing you could do.'

'And Ben?'

'Not your doing. None of it was.' Martha held his hand. 'Do you remember much about it?'

'Nothing after that skeleton, no.' The skeleton of an old highwayman was the conduit through which the Vurosis had attacked and possessed Duncan.

'It's probably best that way.'

'I do remember asking you out, though.' He smiled at her.

'And as much as I know you can't resist me, I'll have to ask you to hold out for a bit longer. I think I'll need a little while to get over all this,' she said, returning his smile.

She was getting used to letting them down gently; Will Shakespeare in the Globe Theatre, Victor Meredith and Claude Romand in the Lake District, Riley Vashtee on the SS Pentallian. Even the 15 year old Solin Tiermann on Tiermann's World had a crush on her.

There was only one man who stood a chance with her, and he seemed completely oblivious to her romantic desires, apparently immune to her charms.

'Good idea,' Duncan agreed, reluctantly.

'Angela Hook said I can stay here for as long as I want, and help out with the well restoration,' he added. 'I think I'd like that.'

Martha kissed him goodbye and went out. Once again, she found the Doctor waiting for her by the well. He was watching the sunrise.

'I can't keep this,' she said, showing him the gold sovereign Angela had given her.

'Why not?'

'It's too valuable. I mean, it would feel like stealing. I've never owned anything so valuable in all my life.'

The Doctor pulled a face. 'I dunno. There's a planet called Yoga that's made from solid gold. They wouldn't be impressed with you there.'

She laughed. 'Maybe not. But all the same . . .'

He watched her carefully, hands in his pockets, the tails of his long brown coat blowing out behind him. 'So, what are you going to do with it, then?'

'I'm going to make a wish,' she said, holding it out over the well.

'That's a gold sovereign,' he said slowly. 'That's got to be one heck of a wish.'

'We'll make it a double. Have you thought of what you'd wish for yet?'

He shook his head. 'Nah.'

'Go on,' she said, stepping closer. 'There must be something.'

'Nope. Nothing.' His eyes held that faraway look that Martha knew so well. He would be wishing that he could have Rose back by his side. But, whatever he was thinking, whatever it was the Doctor secretly wished for, he would never tell her. He was, and always would be, a mystery to her.

'Well,' she said eventually, 'looks like I'm going to have to wish for both of us.'

She closed her eyes tight and let go of the coin. Seconds later there was a distinct, echoing plop as it hit water.

She opened her eyes in delight. 'Did you hear that?'

The Doctor was already leaning over the well-shaft, peering down. 'There's water down there! The underground springs must be filling it again. Perhaps the Vurosis had been blocking them for all these years.'

'That's brilliant!'

He grinned at her. 'I love a happy ending, don't you?'

She linked his arm and pulled him away from the well, heading for the TARDIS. 'Always.'

'So what did you wish for?' he asked her.

She had an enigmatic smile on her lips. If only he knew . . . if only wishes came true. 'Never you mind.'


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21  
**

'So where next?' said the Doctor, fussing with the TARDIS controls. His long, skinny fingers danced across the strange array of instruments and dials, his face lit by the eerie pale glow from the central column.

'What about that spaceship?' said Martha.

'That spaceship,' agreed the Doctor. He began to set the coordinates, then stopped to look back up at her. 'Which spaceship?'

'That spaceship you were telling me about. When we were waiting to be executed.' She sighed and rolled her eyes. 'Just a minute ago!'

Just a minute ago they'd been in Milky-Pink City, an intergalactic tourist destination that had been built years before. Unfortunately, it was completed just as the market collapsed leaving the city and its robots redundant.

So the robots had been delighted to see Martha and the Doctor, even if they hadn't booked ahead. They had fallen over themselves to oblige their every whim. They squabbled about who got to fetch Martha a drink and came to blows over who took the Doctor's coat.

It had quickly turned into a war between different factions of keen-to-please robots, all with exquisite manners. And then an hour later they'd turned on the Doctor and Martha as the source of all the problems.

The Doctor's eyes narrowed to slits as he struggled to remember what he'd said to take her mind off the fact that they were waiting to be killed. 'Oh! That spaceship,' he said after a moment.

'Come on,' she said, 'you said it was brilliant.'

'Well it was. Literally. The Starship Brilliant. Luxury passenger thing. In space. But I only told you about it to take your mind off, well, you know . . .' He drew a finger quickly across his neck.

'Yeah, but come on,' said Martha, leaning towards him across the console. 'You said nobody knew what happened to it. Not even you.'

'Well no,' he said, scratching at the back of his head. 'Not exactly. I mean, there are theories.' He began to step lightly around the control console, flicking switches, careful not to meet her gaze. 'It could have fallen into a black hole, or crashed into a giant space squid. You know it vanished just before a huge galactic war?'

'No,' said Martha.

'Well. That could mean something couldn't it?'

'Oh come on,' said Martha, 'you know you want to. It's a mystery!'

'Yeah, well.' The Doctor thrust a hand into the trouser pocket of his skinny, pinstriped suit; his way of looking casual. 'Exploring a spaceship that you know is going to vanish forever . . . Probably be a bit dangerous. Dangerous and reckless. Dangerous and reckless and irresponsible.'

'What?' she laughed. 'And never know what happened to it? Ever? That's not like you at all.'

The Doctor gazed at her, deep brown eyes open wide. Martha felt the smile on her own face falter, her insides turning over. She had come to accept that the Doctor didn't share her feelings for him, but sometimes the way he looked at her . . .

'So we're going?' she said quickly.

'It'll bother me if we don't,' he said, busy now with coordinates and the helmic regulator. He stopped to look back up at her. 'But there are some rules. Important ones.'

'Whatever you say.'

'Yes, whatever I say.' Martha did her best to look serious. 'One,' the Doctor continued. 'We can't get involved with anyone we meet. Two, we absolutely cannot change anything. Not a bean. Nuffink. Nada. Nana nee-nee noo noo.'

'Right.'

'And three . . .' He turned from the controls to look at her and his eyes sparkled as he grinned. 'Oh, what's the use?' he said, and plunged the lever to send them hurtling back in time.

'Honestly, it'll be fine –' began Martha.

But the huge explosion cut her sentence short. She was thrown off her feet, hurled head over heels across the TARDIS console to crash hard into the metal mesh floor.

"Typical", she thought, as everything faded to black.

* * *

The Doctor slumped down in the chair beside Martha, a stupid grin on his face. 'Isn't this . . .' he gestured at the happy throng of tentacled Balumin, badger-faced former pirates, mouthless men from the engine room and the rest of the starship's human crew. 'Isn't it just . . .' But he couldn't quite think of the word.

'Brilliant?' Martha suggested.

'Yeah!' said the Doctor laughing. 'That's exactly what this is.' A luxury starship caught between alternate universes, existing in an altered reality, where the socialites and partygoers could party on forever . . . BRILLIANT!

'You want to stay, do you?'

His grin faded, and in his eyes there was that terrible alien loneliness. He had been to an alternate universe before. The woman he loved was trapped there. To stay here in an altered reality, being neither here nor there . . . He tried not to show his sadness when he turned to her.

'Nah,' he said, all false cheer and ease. 'We'd get bored. Well, I'd get bored. And that'd be boring for you. So yeah, we'd both get bored. What I said the first time.'

'Doctor,' she said seriously. 'What about everyone else?'

'What about them?'

'They might get bored, too?'

'What?' he said. 'On a ship with everlasting cheese and pineapple on sticks?'

Martha held his gaze, saying nothing. She knew he knew better than that. It was just that sometimes he needed reminding.

'OK,' he said at length and got to his feet. Then he climbed unsteadily onto the chair beside her, and started clapping his hands.

'Attention!' he called. 'Oi, you 'orrible lot, lend me your ears!' The noise of the party died down and people came in from the ballroom to hear what he had to say.

'Speech!' called Martha's friend Mrs Wingsworth, who just happened to be a tentacled, orange alien called a Balumin.

'Speech!' agreed Captain Georgina, who looked a little tipsy and was wearing a paper hat.

'Speech!' joined in the rest of the party. The Doctor let them work themselves up a bit before calling for some quiet.

'All right, a speech,' he said, and earned a massive cheer. 'The party here never ends,' he said – again a massive cheer. 'And there's nobody who can tell you otherwise,' he went on. And then, after a dramatic pause, he added, 'except you.'

The party-goers glanced round at each other nervously, not sure what the Doctor meant.

'Me and Martha,' he told them. 'We're leaving. In an hour.' The audience booed good-naturedly, and he smiled as he made placating gestures with his outstretched hands.

'And when we're gone,' he continued, 'that's it. There's no way out of here. You stay here for ever.' The background rumble of chatter died suddenly away. Everyone stood transfixed by the Doctor.

'So,' he told them. 'You can come with us. We'll drop you off somewhere, and you continue your lives as you were. With a war coming. With real stuff to deal with. With food that runs out and people who die and things never quite the same any more.' He let them take that in. 'Or you can stay. For ever. The party going on and on, never getting old. But it never being any different. Never getting outside. Never seeing anyone else. But safe.'

They hung on the words, awed by what he was saying. 'No one owns any of you. No one else gets to decide. You each have to make your own choice. My ship's the blue box in the engine rooms,' he said.

'You've got an hour to decide. Come on, Martha.'

He jumped down from the chair, took Martha's hand in his and led her through the crowd. The party-goers gaped at them in silence, the only sound coming from the Brilliant's hidden speakers as a pop tune came to an end.

Martha let the Doctor lead her to the centre of the ballroom, the passengers and pirates and crew all around them. The Doctor took Martha's left hand in his, put his right hand on her waist. Realising what he meant to do, she put her hand to his shoulder, so close to him she could feel the buttons of his suit against her chest, so close she could feel his hearts beating.

'But what if they want to stay?' she asked him, looking around at the various friends they had made and those she'd not even got to know.

'Then they stay,' said the Doctor. 'But they have to choose.'

From the Brilliant's speakers, a new pop song began. It took a moment for Martha to realise what it was, by which time she and the Doctor had already started dancing.

'Grace Kelly!' she laughed.

'The song,' the Doctor nodded, wheeling her around the floor. 'Got it off your iPod. Thought you wouldn't mind. Good old Mika.'

Do I attract you?  
Do I repulse you with my queasy smile?  
Am I too dirty?  
Am I too flirty?  
Do I like what you like . . . ?

Following the Doctor and Martha's lead, others joined the dance floor, and Martha could see the same look on all their faces; the same determination to enjoy themselves, the same terror and confusion as they tried to make their choices.

Martha looked away quickly, torn on their behalf. She kept her mind on the music and not treading on the Doctor's toes. At least she didn't have to make that choice herself, she thought. But really she already had, a long time ago. And one day he'd take her back to her own time, and she'd have to choose again . . .

But for now she was here, and she was with the man she secretly loved. She hung on to the Doctor and let him lead her in a jive.

I tried to be like Grace Kelly  
But all her looks were too sad  
So I try a little Freddie . . .

The Doctor and Martha both "Hmm-mmm'd" to that bit.

I've gone identity mad!

She spun around as the Doctor held her hand above her head. He was a good dancer; apparently back in the 1940's on Earth a young up and coming dancer named Fred Astaire had given him some lessons in return for introducing him to a film producer.

As usual, she couldn't tell if it was true, or one of his tales that he told to try and impress her. She just enjoyed the experience of being this close to him, the feel of his hand in the small of her back, her body rubbing against his as they swirled around the dance floor.

I could be brown  
I could be blue  
I could be violet sky  
I could be hurtful  
I could be purple  
I could be anything you like

It was a rare opportunity, and she was going to make the most of it, wishing that this moment would go on forever. But then, as Mika came to the end of his song, she wondered if he'd danced with Rose like this, if he'd looked into her eyes, and if he'd kissed her?

The party aboard the Brilliant would go on for ever. Yet for those who would choose the one chance to escape, the last dance was coming to an end.

Humphry! We're leaving.  
Cha-ching!

Martha reluctantly released her dance partner, and they led those passengers who had decided to leave in a disorganised conga through the corridors towards the TARDIS, accompanied by Mika's song Big Girl echoing around them.

There were the inevitable comments about their ship being too small to get everyone in, and the subsequent expletives of disbelief when they went inside (with apologies to the ladies afterwards). Martha managed to round up the odd few who ran out screaming, getting them to take a deep breath, close their eyes, and come inside to have a cup of tea.

The Doctor was about to adjust the controls and start the Time Rotor, when he thought about how Martha had gotten her head around the effects of the time loop. At present, she was standing by one of the coral struts, being chatted up by Archie, one of the badgers.

'Martha, you know how you keep asking me how to drive the TARDIS?'

She popped the pineapple and cheese canapé that Archie had offered her into her mouth. 'Yeah?' she answered uncertainly.

'Well, having been stabbed and electrocuted to death, and come through it unscathed; I reckon that qualifies you for a driving lesson. What do you say?'

Her face lit up. 'Really? That's brilliant!'

She ran over to the console and hugged his arm excitedly. He had a momentary flashback to when Rose used to do that, and quickly cleared his throat and shook off the memory.

'Now just remember, we've got the "L" plates on,' he told her, and then whispered, 'but you can still impress your new boyfriend over there.'

Martha looked across the console and saw Archie smiling at her. 'Oh I wouldn't worry about him,' she said as the female badgers Zuzia and Kitty Rose came up either side of him and whispered in each of his ears. He shrugged apologetically at Martha and then gave her a cheeky wink.

'I see what you mean,' he grinned. 'Right, pull down that lever and lock the doors. We don't want them flying open while we're in the Vortex do we?'

He showed her how to start up the Time Rotor and put the TARDIS into the Vortex. He helped her set the time coordinates for when the Brilliant would arrive at its destination.

The passengers knew the cover story that they had hitched a lift when the Brilliant's drive had stalled. Those that had remained on the Brilliant were having such a good time that they wanted to stay and party. Which wasn't much of a cover story, because it was true.

Wellll . . .

'You have arrived at your destination.' the Doctor announced, like some kind of intergalactic sat-nav as he helped Martha stop the Time Rotor. 'Only it's been a few years since you were reported missing.'

Martha walked down the ramp and opened the door a fraction to have a quick peep and make sure they weren't in a polar wilderness, desert, or primeval jungle.

'Oh,' she said, pleasantly surprised and throwing open the double doors. 'It looks like this is your stop.'

It appeared to be late evening in a bustling entertainment district of a busy, futuristic city. There were lights, media displays and noise everywhere. It reminded Martha of Times Square in New York.

They said their goodbyes to the passengers as they filed out of the TARDIS, the humans, tentacled Balumin, mouthless men from the engine room, badger-faced former pirates, and a variety of others.

'Oi, Captain Florence,' the Doctor called to the former pirate captain.

Florence turned, raising a furry eyebrow. She wore a loose, collarless blouse. Her bare, bristly arms were taut and muscular, like she spent her whole time working out. A jagged scar worked across her forehead, dipped behind an eyepatch, and then continued down her hairy cheek.

'There's plenty of opportunities for venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and independent financial wotsits around here,' he said, using her own terminology for piracy. 'Just stay out of trouble, yeah.'

'Aye me hearty, I reckon we can do that.' She touched her forelock in salute, and the Doctor returned it with a smile. Martha gave a little wave with her fingers, and the rag tag troupe of former pirates set off into the night.

The Doctor then had a panicky thought. 'Oh, and when they say you can make a killing on the financial markets; don't take it too literally. You don't really have to kill anyone.'

Florence stopped and turned to grin at him. 'I'll bear that in mind me hearty.'

'Badger that in mind,' Dashiel the former pirate said helpfully. 'We're badgers, not bears.'

'Shut up Dash,' Florence said, rolling her eye. 'A little learnin' is a dangerous thing.'

A grinning Doctor held out his bent arm for a giggling Martha. 'Fancy a look around while we're here?'

'Why not?' she replied, wrapping her arm around his, and together, arm in arm, they set off to explore the exciting city.


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22**

As they walked down the neon-lit boulevard, Martha looked up to see the hazy, glowing arc that bisected the night sky over their heads, twinkling against the alien starscape beyond it. It reminded her of a snowfall, but suspended in the air like a freeze-frame image. She blinked and laughed in delight as she realised that there were actually letters imposed on the shimmering band. She picked out a 'W', an 'O' and then another.

'Woo!' she said, reading it aloud. 'Ha! Doctor, look! It says "woo" up there! That's funny.'

The Doctor halted and gave her a lightly mocking can't-I-take-you-anywhere? sort of look. 'Actually, we're only just seeing the end bit of it. The whole thing says "Hollywood", but the letters are a hundred odd kilometres high and you have to be in polar orbit to read it all at once.' He made a circling gesture with his index finger. 'Rings, you know? Like Saturn has in your solar system. Made of ice and rock dust. The owners use photomolecular field generators to hold the letters in place. It certainly makes the planet easier to find.'

She smirked at him, raising an eyebrow. 'There's a planet called Hollywood? Planet Hollywood?'

'Yup,' He started walking again, hands in the pockets of his big brown coat, skirting through the thronging mass of variant life forms who were also out enjoying the warm evening.

Martha was still looking upwards. 'Oh yeah, the letters are moving, I can see it. Now it says 'Ood".'

'That's an entirely different planet,' he said offhandedly. 'This one was terra formed in the late twenty-fifth century by a consortium of entertainment businesses, right after the Incorporated Nation of Neo-California was finally destroyed by a super-volcano.' He pointed up into the sky. 'There's also BollyWorld in the next orbit over, a bunch of Celebra-Stations . . .'

'What happens there?'

'It's like a safari park, except you get to chase no-talent android celebrities around instead of wild animals.'

Martha made a face. 'Things haven't changed much in 400 years, then.'

He went on. 'This place is the movie capital of the Milky Way, and it's got the best cinema anywhere, anywhen . . .'

She nodded, taking it all in. 'When you said we could go to the movies, I had thought, y'know, we'd stop off at my local multiplex or something . . .' Martha dodged to one side, to allow a pack of cheetah girls in opulent holographic dresses to pass them.

The Doctor turned to face her, walking backwards. 'Well, we could. But this place has really smart seats.' He moved seamlessly, never once bumping into anybody despite the fact he wasn't looking where he was going. 'And I mean really smart, as in intelligent. They mould to all your comfort zones, but not so much that you doze off during the good bits. And there's no sticky floors or people talking during the film. Free popcorn as well.'

'Choc ices?'

He nodded. 'Oh yeah. All the trimmings.'

Martha gave him a sly smile. 'Ooh, cosy. It's almost like a date,' she said hopefully.

For a second, the Doctor was slightly wrong-footed. 'No, not really. Just, uh, two mates, going to see a flick . . .' I mean, he liked Martha, he liked her a lot. She was good company . . . a good mate, but she wasn't Rose.

He cleared his throat and pointed in the direction of a low dome made of hexagons a short distance away, changing the subject. 'They copied the design from a place on Earth, the Cinerama on Sunset Boulevard.' He waved at the roof. 'I've had a soft spot for it for ages. Defeated an incursion of Geomatide Macros there back in the 1970s. Nasty things, they used the angles of the ceiling tiles as a mathematical hyperspace vector generator . . .' He trailed off and then clapped his hands. 'Right! What do you want to see? They've got everything. Pirates of the Caribbean VI? The Starship Brilliant Story? Casablanca?'

She sighed. 'I'm in the mood for a Western.' The words popped out of her mouth without her thinking about it. 'I haven't seen one in ages.' And suddenly, Martha felt a little bit sad. 'When we were kids, me and Leo and Tish, we'd watch a cowboy film every Sunday afternoon. There was always one on, just before lunchtime. Mum would be cooking a joint and making these great roast potatoes, and we could smell it from the living room. We'd all get together, the three of us and Mum and Dad, and eat during the last half.'

She sighed. 'Funny. It seems like that was a very long time ago. A very long way away.' Martha thought of her family and if felt like there was a vast, yawning distance between her and them. A pang of homesickness tightened in her chest, and her eyes drifted up to the alien sky again.

'A Western it is, then,' said the Doctor gently. 'Rio Bravo. A Fistful of Dollars. Dances With Wolves . . .' He fell silent as they approached the box office. The kiosk was dark and lifeless. 'Hang on. This doesn't look right.' He fished in his pocket and aimed his sonic screwdriver at the booth. The slender device buzzed, and the door hissed open.

He glanced inside and gave a pained groan, returning with a moment later with a sheet of electronic paper in his hand.

'What's wrong?'

'Cinema's closed,' he replied, showing her the paper. 'It seems that last week they were having a disaster film festival, using virtual environment simulators. Apparently, someone set the dial too high when they were screening Earthquake! And, well . . . the floor caved in.' He Sighed. 'Still. Better that than The Towering Inferno.'

She turned and walked back the way they had come, back toward the TARDIS. 'It's OK. Never mind.' It was odd; after all, it wasn't as if they were talking about anything serious, right? It was just a movie, wasn't it? And yet Martha felt cheerless, as if something as simple as being able to watch some creaky old Wild West film was the only way she could feel close to her family, out here in the depths of space-time, so far away from all she knew.

The Doctor trailed behind her, stepping up to unlock the door of the police box as they returned to the alley where it had materialised. He seemed to sense her change of mood. 'I'm sorry, Martha.'

She tried to make light of it. 'Oh, who wants stale popcorn and runny ice cream anyway?' But she couldn't keep the disappointment from her voice. They entered the wide, domed chamber of the control room, stepping into the thrumming heart of the TARDIS.

All at once, the Doctor's expression changed. He grinned. 'You know what? You're right. And I have a much better idea.'

He bounded past her to the console that ringed the crystalline central column. Without any apparent order to his actions, the Doctor skipped from panel to panel, nipping switches and spinning dials.

He paused, chewing his lip, and then worked a crank handle. Martha's momentary melancholy faded before his burst of excitement. She had to smile; the Doctor had a way about him, as if he took each piece of sadness in the universe personally, like he had sole responsibility to banish the gloom from things.

'What are you up to now?'

He peeked at her from around the column. 'Why bother watching the Wild West?' he asked her. 'Why bother watching it when we can, well . . .'

'Go there?' Her smile widened.

The Doctor grabbed the TARDIS's dematerialisation control. 'Martha Jones,' he said, slamming the lever down, 'Saddle up!'

* * *

The Doctor, Martha, and the sheriff's son Nathan Blaine rode into the town of Redwood from the town of Ironhills and headed for the alleyway behind the Assay Office. They were in 1880's Colorado, not the place they had expected to find intelligent, alien weapons of mass destruction.

Two of the handguns had been found by a couple of gunslingers, and they had immediately been converted into Clade soldiers by the weapons. The third and most important weapon had been found by the travelling "quack" doctor Alvin Godlove, who had used the battlefield repair setting to cure people (for a reasonable remuneration of course).

Martha had been mortally wounded by one of the Clade to force the Doctor to find the controller weapon being used by Godlove. When he had found it, he then had no choice but to take the weapon and let it control him.

After saving Martha, he had then had a battle of wills with the Clade weapon, and very nearly lost. Unlike a certain Time Lord weapon of mass destruction that had a conscience, and had made him justify his actions, the Clade weapon had no such restrictions, and just wanted to kill.

The Clade had been bombarding him with his memories of loss for Rose, Sarah Jane, and all his other companions in an attempt to wear down his resistance. It tempted him with the promise of destroying the Daleks for good. Drowning in the darkness of these thoughts, he had been guided to the light of his goodness by Martha in the only way she could think of . . . She had kissed him.

That kiss had focussed his mind and he had been able to impose his own executive command protocols into the Clade weapons. That had caused a feedback loop which caused the weapons to self destruct, taking an old iron mine, and half the hill with them.

And now, they approached the welcoming blue box, hidden between the clapboard buildings, accompanied by Jenny Forrest, the town's school teacher. 'And now you're both going to leave us,' she said.

Martha nodded, trying to keep a light tone to her voice. 'Places to go, people to see.'

'Best this way,' said the Doctor. 'I hate long goodbyes, don't you?'

'Hey, Doc!' As the three of them approached the police box, Nathan came bounding up to them. 'Hey, uh, listen. Mr Hawkes tells me my pa left the house to me and all . . .'

Nathan's father had been shot and killed by the Clade gunslingers when they came looking for Godlove. Nathan chewed his lip. 'I was thinkin', you and Miss Martha might want to stay a while?' He nodded at the TARDIS. 'A lot more room than in there, I'd reckon.'

'You'd be surprised,' Martha smiled.

'That's a kind offer, but we've got to move on.' The Doctor had his borrowed Stetson in his hand, and he flipped it around his wrist and placed it on Nathan's head. 'Look after this for me, will you?'

'Sure,' said the youth, nodding reluctantly.

As Martha unlocked the TARDIS door, the Doctor gave Jenny a hopeful look. 'One last thing. Just for the sake of propriety, could you do me a favour and make sure Mr Hawkes back there keeps us out of his newspaper? I think history can roll on just fine without us cropping up where we shouldn't be.'

'I'll do that,' Jenny promised, 'but I'd beg to differ. History needs all the help it can get.'

The Doctor gave her a final nod and followed Martha into the TARDIS and shut the door behind him, closing off an all-too-brief glimpse of a strange, impossible room ranged inside.

For a long moment, Jenny and Nathan stood watching in silence; then the youth spoke. 'So, uh, what happens now? Is that shack there gonna sprout wheels and roll away?'

Jenny smiled ruefully. 'Given what I've seen of the Doctor, anything is possible.'

Abruptly the door opened a crack and the Doctor leaned out with a book in his hand. 'Jenny! Almost forgot, I have something for you. You liked Jules Verne, right? You're going to love this guy, then. Bit political at times, but some brilliant stories.'

He pressed the book into her hand and the teacher opened it at the first page. 'The Time Machine,' she read aloud, 'An Invention. By H.G. Wells.' Jenny saw something in the text and frowned. 'How odd. That must be a misprint. The publication date is ten years hence.'

'Yes, must be,' agreed the Doctor. 'I wouldn't go lending it to anyone else, though. Well, maybe Nathan . . . But when you've read it, things will make a bit more sense, I promise.' He smiled again. 'Bye!'

He left them there in silence; then the sound of mighty engines of infinity wheezed into action, and the TARDIS vanished into the fading light of the sunset.

Inside the time ship, the Doctor circled the central console and fiddled with the controls, patting and tapping the machine as one might stroke a cat, while the central column rose and fell, rose and fell.

Martha jerked her head in the direction of the doors. 'Was that a sensible thing to do, giving Jenny a copy of a book that hasn't even been written yet?'

'Ah, it's OK,' he said airily. 'I mean, what's she going to do? It's not like she can post spoilers on the internet, is it?'

'Good point,' she agreed. Martha's fingers strayed to the hem of her leather jacket and she suddenly realised she was toying with the spot where the gunslinger's energy blast had hit her. She drew in a sharp breath, and from the corner of her eye she saw the Doctor pause.

'I'm glad you're all right,' he told her, the mirth fading for a moment. 'I'm only sorry it wasn't enough. There's always some who slip away . . . The Sheriff, Walking Crow, Alvin Godlove . . .'

'Him?' Martha blinked. 'But he was a scumbag!'

'Really?' The Doctor eyed her. 'Have you forgotten about all the people that man cured of smallpox, and who knows what other illnesses while he was carrying the Clade? I know he was motivated by greed, but a life saved is still a life saved.'

Martha paused, mulling it over. Perhaps the Doctor was right. Godlove had just been a quack con-artist with loose morals; she shuddered to think what could have happened if someone really dangerous, a true killer, had found the Clade in the woods that night.

'In his own warped sort of way, Alvin Godlove was trying to do the right thing. He was just . . . too weak to stand up to it.' She heard him sigh. 'The Clades have the power to heal or to kill.' He looked at the holster still belted around his waist and with a frown; he took it off and put it aside. 'Any kind of technology, it's always the same. It's not black or white, good or evil. It's how you use it, the intention behind it, that's the important thing.'

'Peacemakers,' said Martha, thinking.

'Yes,' replied the Doctor. After a moment, he crossed to where he'd dumped his brown coat in a heap on the chair and dipped into a pocket, his hand returning with her cell phone. His expression was troubled. 'I . . . I thought you might want this back.' He tossed it and Martha caught it out of the air. 'Just in case, y'know, if you wanted to call home.'

Martha opened the phone and her finger hovered over the keys. Whenever she had a bad experience in the past, it was Tish that she called, Tish who she moaned to, Tish that listened to her cry when she was dumped or just emotional over something. Martha thought about those moments after she had been injured, thinking of her family and wanting to see them again.

But what could she tell her sister if she called her? I'm just phoning from the Wild West to tell you how I got zapped by a space alien super gun with a mind of its own. She gave a slight shake of her head and snapped the phone shut again.

The Doctor was still watching her. 'After what happened, I wouldn't mind if you wanted to, you know . . . call it a day.'

'Call it a day?' Martha repeated. 'You mean, go home?' She nodded at the door again. 'Are you throwing me out?'

'What?' The Doctor was abashed. 'No, never. You're a brilliant house guest. You do your share of the washing up and you don't leave dirty kilts everywhere, not like some people.'

He paused, taking a breath. 'It's not that at all. I meant go home if you want to,' he said, without weight. 'It's not all fun and games, is it? It's risky, being a wanderer in the fourth dimension. I'd totally understand if you'd had enough, if all that was too much for you.'

He sighed. 'It's not every day you stare death in the face. I'm sorry that had to happen to you, Martha, I really am.'

'It's not the first time I've been there recently. And if I stay, it could happen again, couldn't it?'

'Yes,' he admitted, careful and serious. 'It could. And the next time you might not be so lucky.'

A slow smile crossed her face, turning into a grin as the Doctor's expression became one of mild confusion. 'You know what? I lived through that. Me, Martha Jones, Medical Student. I lived through it and I was never afraid, not even for a second. Do you know why?'

He was starting to smile again. 'Tell me,' he said.

'Because I trust you. You're the Doctor.'

He shook his head and chuckled. 'And you're a rare one, Martha Jones.'

'I am,' she agreed, walking across to lean over his shoulder and study the monitor screen. 'So,' she asked, 'where next?'

The Doctor matched her grin. 'Let's follow the trails of time, and see where that takes us . . .'


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23**

'So where have the trails of time taken us then?' Martha asked as the Time Rotor finished pumping up and down. The monitor screen was no help, showing concentric circles rotating in geometric patterns.

The Doctor gave her an excited grin from across the console. 'A day out at a family attraction. Castle Extremis, the most brilliant theme park in this part of the cosmos.'

He shut down the console and grabbed his brown coat from the coral strut as they headed for the door. 'Guided tours of the fairytale castle, coffee shops, exhibitions and historical re-enactments.'

'A bit like Windsor Castle and Legoland then?'

'Yeah, s'pose so . . . sort of.'

'Hello,' Martha heard the Doctor say cheerfully as he stepped outside. 'What's your name, then?'

Martha stepped out behind him, and by the time she had closed the door and looked around, who ever he was talking too had gone.

'It doesn't look like the most brilliant theme park in this part of the cosmos,' Martha said. 'It looks like a damp, gloomy tunnel.' She sniffed. 'And it smells.'

'It's not damp,' the Doctor said. He plunged his hands into his coat pocket and sniffed as well. 'Well, not really. Not "DAMP" damp. Doesn't smell too bad, either.' He peered into semidarkness. 'I'll give you gloomy, though. Lots of gloom. Looming gloom. A real gloom loom, assuming gloom can loom.'

It reminded Martha of the London Dungeon tourist attraction on Westminster Bridge Road. Her mum had taken them there when they were kids, and she remembered the musty smell, the gloomy lighting . . . and the rats. It was brilliant!

'So where are we really?'

'Really? Outside the TARDIS. In a smelly, gloomy, not really-damp-damp tunnel, I should think. Pity that girl ran off, we could have asked her.'

'What girl?'

'The one that ran off. When she saw you.'

Martha's eyes widened. 'Excuse me, but it was you that frightened her off. I didn't even see her.'

The Doctor wasn't listening. He pulled the TARDIS door closed, then marched off down the gloomy passageway.

'Maybe we're a bit early,' he said. 'Maybe they just haven't opened yet.' He hesitated as he reached a junction, pointing first one way then the other. 'Eeny meeny miny mo,' he murmured. He set off along the left-hand passageway. His delighted voice echoed back to Martha. 'Oh, it's mo!'

'Early as in, they're still having breakfast?' Martha wondered, catching him up.

'Or early as in the place is still a frontier fort under almost constant siege from either Anthium or Zerugma, and they haven't actually sorted out the peace treaty and built it yet.'

Martha ran to catch him up. 'You said guided tours and coffee shops,' she accused. 'Not frontier fort and constant siege. You said exhibitions and historical re-enactments.'

'Yeah,' the Doctor conceded. 'But so much better when you arrive in the middle of the real thing. I mean, just think about it.'

'I am thinking about it.'

'Real siege warfare. Real people in real situations. Real history,' he went on.

'Real blood, real death, real destruction and real danger,' Martha pointed out.

The Doctor paused to inspect one of the torches flickering on the wall. He seemed to be rolling the idea round his mouth.

'That too,' he decided eventually. 'You know, this isn't real though. Look at it – that's clever.'

Before Martha could stop him, he stuck his hand into the flames. 'It's all right,' he said, seeing her expression. 'Like I said. Not real. Brilliant, clever, realistic. But not real. They must have a fusion generator somewhere. Means we can't be far off. War's probably been over for years.'

'Probably?'

He was off again. 'Well, possibly. Maybe.' He spun round and continued walking backwards so he could look at Martha behind him. 'I don't know – let's find out. We need to find someone to ask really. Like that little girl.'

Martha stopped.

The Doctor stopped too. 'What?' he asked, not turning to see what she was looking at.

'Maybe,' Martha said slowly, 'we could ask the sinister cloaked figure who looks like he's enrolled as Chief Frightener at the Monastery of Doom?'

The Doctor's eyes narrowed. 'Behind me?' he whispered, pointing over his own shoulder without looking.

Martha nodded.

* * *

The Doctor wandered back from the TARDIS workshop into the console room, holding his now repaired sonic screwdriver. 'There we are, good as new.'

He flipped it into the air and caught it, before putting it in his inside jacket pocket. It had been broken when he had prevented the Supreme Commander of the Zerugian Forces, General Orlo from derailing the peace process by staging a military coup.

The TARDIS had helped him to repair the sonic device and restore the operating software from a backup. The TARDIS regularly backed up the data and installed updates via its roaming Wi-Fi connection. A couple of years ago, after a problem in The Albion Hospital, it had uploaded a nifty little app for resonating concrete.

And when his sonic screwdriver had been destroyed in the Royal Hope Hospital, the TARDIS had produced a replacement that still had the 200 year old subroutine hidden in the operating system architecture. It was running an implanted calculation that he would find useful in a few hundred years time.

'Here, I made us a brew,' Martha said as she handed him a cup of tea.

'Hah! And in my favourite mug, thank you.' He waggled his eyebrows and took a slurp.

She often wondered why the San Kaloon mug was his favourite, and presumed that it was a present from his ex when they had visited the glass pyramid. She took a sip of her tea, and had a frown on her face.

'So let me get this straight. We're going 100 years into the past to hide that glass diary where you found it yesterday, yeah?'

'That's right. Manfred Grieg gave me some valuable insights into what had gone on in the castle, and helped us save the day.'

Grieg had been Chief Minister to the Lord High Advocate for Anthium and the Governor of Castle Extremis, Kendal Pennard. It had been Chief Minister Grieg who advised Pennard on the strategy used to recapture Extremis after the Second Occupation of the Zerugian forces.

'But what about cause and effect? Isn't this the effect before the cause . . . so that the cause can't have the effect?' Martha continued.

The Doctor looked at her in amazement. 'Martha Jones! So you have been paying attention. Top marks.'

'But isn't that one of those loopy paradox things that you keep saying will implode the universe?'

'If you don't know what you're doing then yes it can . . .' He scratched the back of his head as he tried to work out the best way of explaining it. 'You see, you're assuming that time is a strict progression of cause to effect.

'Am I?'

'Yeah, but don't worry about it, most humans do. But actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey . . . stuff.'

'Well I'm glad you cleared that up,' she said sarcastically.

'Okay, think about the time I took my tie off in front of you in Chancellor Street, or when Good Queen Bess wanted to chop my head off.'

'Oh yeah, I see what you mean,' she conceded, but still had her doubts. 'But what about those maintenance robots, Bill and Bott? They didn't recognise you when you found the diary.'

'Or they pretended not to know me,' he said mysteriously as he finished his tea.

'Why would they do that?'

'Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey,' is all he would say as he headed for the door. 'I'll be back in a few minutes.'

'This stone's had it, Bott,' Bill said, jabbing at the wall with his metal arm. A spray of pale dust erupted from the metal point.

'Better replace it then, Bill,' Bott said. 'Give me the measurements and I'll cut one to fit, then we can chop this one out.'

The Doctor, standing in the doorway watched with interest as the robots went about their task.

'You know,' he announced as Bott lifted the crumbling stone out of the wall, 'you're very good at this.'

'Had a lot of practice,' Bott told him.

'Best in the business,' Bill said.

'And who might you be?' Bott asked.

'Not time and motion come to check up on us?' Bill said.

'Not time and motion, no. Well . . .' The Doctor stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and walked across to inspect the hole they had made in the wall. 'Not motion, anyway.'

'So – can we do something for you?' Bill enquired.

'Or are you just going to stand around and get in the way?' Bott asked.

'Sorry.' The Doctor stepped back and gestured for them to carry on.

Bott lifted the stone he had just cut and lined it up with the hole. Bill steadied the heavy load as Bott inched it forwards. The man cleared his throat. Bill and Bott stopped. The stone remained motionless.

'Problem?' Bill asked.

'Something you'd like to say?' Bott checked.

'No, no. It's looking good,' the Doctor said. 'Excellent in fact. Brilliant. I was just wondering though . . .'

'Yes?' Bott said.

'What?' Bill asked.

The Doctor was holding something. Something he had taken from his pocket. It was rectangular, and looked like it was made of translucent plastic or glass. 'I was wondering if I could pop this behind the stone?'

'Why?' Bill asked.

'What for?' Bott wanted to know.

'Well, actually it's to impress a friend of mine. A young lady,' the man confided. 'Then I'll come back later, and find it again. As if by magic.'

'Behind our stone,' Bill said.

'This stone we're about to put in,' Bott added.

'That very one,' the Doctor agreed.

'How will you get it out again?' Bott asked. 'We're not having you messing up our work you know.'

'This is serious stuff,' Bill said. 'Not some parlour trick. This stone'll be in place till it crumbles away and needs replacing again.'

'And that won't be for a hundred years, give or take.'

'With the slow decay you get from the osmotic rendition caused by the barrier,' Bott agreed. The energy barrier that protected the castle from surprise attack also caused the stone of the castle to slowly erode.

'So, I'll need to come back in a hundred years?' the Doctor confirmed.

'Afraid so,' Bott told him.

'Near enough,' Bill agreed.

'Right. OK. Fair enough.' The Doctor beamed at them. 'I'll do that then.'

Bill and Bott looked at each other. Then they looked at the Doctor, who was still grinning at them with satisfaction.

'Sure?' Bill asked.

'Absolutely.'

'Positive?' Bott checked.

'Hundred per cent.'

'Is that glass?' Bill asked.

'Sort of,' the Doctor told them.

'It'll scratch,' Bott told him.

'Wrap it in a bit of cloth,' Bill suggested. 'There's some down there by the cutting tools.'

The Doctor wrapped a piece of cloth round the glass book, and then he pushed it carefully to the back of the hole Bill and Bott had cut in the wall. He stepped back to allow them to fit the new piece of stone. When they'd finished, the hole was closed, hiding the small bundle of cloth.

'Thanks.'

'No problem.'

'Don't mention it.'

'See you in a hundred years.' The Doctor paused in the doorway. 'Oh, and if you could make like you've never seen me before, that'd be a big help.'

'With impressing the young lady?' Bill said.

'Amongst other things. I'm cheating a bit by being here really. Tell you what,' he said as a thought occurred to him.

'Don't sneak on me, and I'll put in a word for you with the Galactic Alliance.'

'You're with the Galactic Alliance?' Bill was impressed.

'Didn't think they operated in this sector,' Bott said.

'All a bit hush-hush,' the Doctor told them. 'But we're always on the lookout for reliable agents.' He knew that a couple of "sleeper agents" already in place, observing everything that went on in the castle and storing the information in their electronic memory would be just the thing he needed, or had needed, or would need . . . needy-weedy, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.

These two maintenance robots would have access to all areas of the castle, and receive their work rosters via encrypted narrow-beam data transmissions that wouldn't go through main communications channels. That meant that no one else would detect them, especially a certain Supreme Commander of the Zerugian Forces.

'What do we need to do?' Bill asked.

'You can rely on us,' Bott assured him.

'I know,' the Doctor said. 'Someone will be in touch. And they will give you a special code, though they won't expect you ever to need it.'

'Sounds like work for work's sake,' Bott grumbled.

'And we know all about that,' Bill said.

'You will need it though,' the Doctor went on. 'It'll be important, really important. And when I ask you for it, I want to hear that release code loud and clear, understand?'

'Yes, sir,' Bill and Bott said together.

'Er,' Bill said, 'release code for what?'

But the Doctor had gone, and the word that the Doctor would put in for them would be the weapons release code for the Galactic Alliance peace keeping troops who would help to defeat the military coup.

Moments later, a breeze blew the dust across the floor as Bill and Bott worked on the next section of wall that needed repairing. If there was a strange sound accompanying it, a sound like reality itself splitting open, then Bott's drill was making so much noise they didn't notice.

In the TARDIS, there was an insistent beeping emanating from the central console.

"That sounds like a warning beep to me" Martha thought to herself. "Here we go again!"


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter 24**

'So, it's a warning, then?' Martha ventured.

With a flourish of his right hand, the Doctor tipped a switch upwards, snorted, and peered anxiously at the scanner mounted on the console… Glasses now on, he rapped the screen with his knuckles.

'Sounds like a warning to me,' she said.

'Nah!' the Doctor retorted. 'Nothing like a warning!'

An incoherent babble of distorted voices crackled from an ancient speaker grille near the scanner. The Doctor tugged an ink pen from his inside suit pocket, and began scribbling furiously on a note pad.

'Well, it's not a mayday, and it's not junk mail. Come on, come on, what are you?' The symbols he scribbled were strange, spidery, and archaic, like alien shorthand.

'Ah!' he exclaimed, straightening up and beaming his best toothy grin, 'Got you!' He hopped backwards onto the jump seat at the edge of the console, swinging his long legs back and forth underneath him. 'That's brilliance, that is, Martha Jones. An unknown alien language deciphered in less than, what, ten seconds.'

He waved the pad under Martha's nose. 'Oh yes!' He grinned, and then realised that Martha was staring at him, unimpressed. 'What?' And then his voice notched up a touch. 'What?'

Martha looked at him. 'It's a warning, isn't it?'

'Yes,' he said, a touch shamefaced.

Martha laughed, and poked him in the ribs, 'What did I tell you? Not just a pretty face, eh?'

The Doctor leaped from the seat, buzzing with pent-up energy. 'I never pay attention to warnings, Martha. Paying attention's for cats! I'm more your golden retriever type, just blunder straight in there all happy and excited! Never got me in to trouble yet… not once in 903 years . . . well, not quite "not once" . . . well – sort of all the time really, but you get my point!'

And with that, those long legs powered him round the console, and he was sliding levers, flicking switches.

'Don't you just love this bit?' he enthused. 'Goose pimples, look!' He rolled up the sleeve of his jacket proudly. 'The tingle that goes with the thrill of discovery. We could be anywhere and any when. Isn't that brilliant?'

'Warnings are meant for a reason,' she said levelly.

'That's what I like about you, Martha Jones!' With a very gentle sideward lurch the TARDIS stopped moving.

The Doctor vaulted the safety rail onto the lower section of the console room floor, and snatched up his fallen brown overcoat. As he tugged the sleeves over his arms, he dashed to the doors.

'Coming?' he said, his hand on the door latch.

'Try and stop me,' and Martha ran down the ramp to join him.

'Are you sure this isn't the Antarctic?' Martha nudged the Doctor gently in the side as she rubbed her hands together to keep them warm.

The two of them were standing outside the TARDIS staring at an expanse of ice and snow, as far as the eye could see, rippled and folded into incredible gravity defying swirls that spread towards the distant curved horizon.

'Not the Antarctic, Martha,' the Doctor stuffed his hands deep into his trouser pockets, and craned his head to peer round the side of the TARDIS.

'Ah!' he said, nodding with dawning realisation. 'Try that way.'

'What?' Martha said, hugging herself against the biting wind.

'Agelaos,' he declared.

Martha carefully poked her head around the edge of the TARDIS. Ahead, in the middle of the ice floe, was a city.

Huge bony spires rose thousands of feet into the crisp indigo sky, domes and skyscrapers, bridges and sheer walls of glass, all covered with a dense layer of snow. It looked forgotten, empty, as though it had been swept into a corner and gathered dust.

But most astonishing of all was the sky. Martha was utterly blown away by the beauty of this frozen planet. Above her, shimmering and arcing majestically were aurora borealis; and beyond them shooting stars, flaring, bursting, dissipating; and distant ion cascades, a palette of unimaginably delicate colours suspended in the clear cerulean sky.

And on the distant horizon, hanging just a fraction above the city skyline, burning like a magnesium-white flare was… a sun? No, it was too low, thought Martha, too close to the planet… And, as she peered closer, the white empty space was pulsing, as though breathing. Could black holes be white, she mused? Surely it would destroy everything nearby. So, not a black hole then, but what?

'A wormhole.' The Doctor seemed to guess what she was thinking. 'It's beautiful, isn't it? Your descendants came here to try to harness the energy of that wormhole. A gateway into the Vortex. That's how we got here.'

'But that's mad. Surely it would have, you know…' She struggled to articulate her thoughts.

'Destroyed them? Nah!' The Doctor locked the TARDIS door. 'Fancy a walk?'

'Aggy-what?' she queried, trotting to keep pace with the Doctor's enormous strides.

'Agi-lay-os,' the Doctor pronounced. 'One of the furthest outposts of the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire. The planet was colonised by a group of 2,000 pioneers from Earth. They terraformed it, or started to.' He scratched his head, ruffling his brown, spiky hair.

'Something happened here?' Martha posed.

'Mm.' He frowned, but forged on regardless.

'What did the warning say?' she persisted. 'Doctor?'

He stopped, swivelled to face her. 'Give or take the odd vowel: "Stay away".'

'From what?'

He started walking again. 'That's the million credit question.'

To Martha it looked like the city had been deserted for years. At her side the Doctor was chattering on. 'For many centuries they lived on the lip of the wormhole using its energy to power their society. The side effect, though now, get this, Martha, it's brilliant – the side effect of living so close was that the population began to develop a certain degree of psychic ability.'

Martha raised an eyebrow. 'What? Tea leaves and palm-reading type of psychic?'

'They developed the ability to see strands of future time . . . that's all being psychic is.' He suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, and Martha virtually cannoned into him.

'What?'

'Shush!' he held his hand up for silence.

'What?' Martha hissed.

The Doctor bought his lips very close to Martha's ear, and whispered, 'When I say run… run.'

Martha felt her skin crawl, and her head suddenly flicked around, her eyes searching the darkened buildings looming over her. She could see nothing, absolutely nothing.

'Run!' yelled the Doctor, grabbing her hand tightly, and yanking her suddenly to the left. Her feet skidding on the snow, she stumbled after him into the shattered shell of a nearby building. And that's when she heard the weeping . . .

* * *

Martha helped Waechter up the ramp to the central console, guiding him to the two pilot's seats. The old man's head swung wildly around, taking in every detail of the cavernous expanse – the coral-like columns that seemed to grow out of the floor, and push up high into the domed ceiling; the rusted railings wrapped in padding, secured with duct tape.

'This is . . . is . . . unbelievable,' he stuttered.

'You'll get used to it,' Martha said, as she sat him down.

The Doctor stalked up to the console, throwing off his overcoat. 'Last chance to say no,' he said.

Waechter took a deep breath, and grasped Martha's hand. 'What are you saying damn fool things like that for?' he said. 'You sound like you want me to change my mind.'

The Doctor laughed, and flipped a switch upwards with an expansive gesture. Within seconds, the grinding and wheezing sound of the TARDIS engines filled the console room, and Waechter stared in wonder at the rising and falling of the central column.

'This machine is incredible—' he began, and then broke off as he clutched at the circuit in his neck and let out a wail of terrible pain. He crumpled to the floor, crackles of green electricity dancing and sparking around his neck and face.

'He can't die here,' Martha shouted. 'It shouldn't happen here and now, like this!'

'We've got to go back,' the Doctor raced to the console, slamming levers down frantically. The TARDIS juddered and shook, and within seconds the central column stopped moving as the craft landed once more.

'I thought you'd disconnected him?' asked Martha.

The Doctor raced over to Waechter, plucking out the sonic screwdriver. He waved it across the chip in the old man's neck, and then examined the readings.

'Oh, I'm so stupid!' He smacked his forehead with the flat of his hand. 'It's a two-way mechanism. If the Beacon fails to hold him here, then the chip kicks in as a back-up. That's so elementary. Why didn't I think of that?'

Martha drew the Doctor to one side. 'Can't you just turn it off?'

The Doctor frowned, his face a mask of concentration. 'It's not that simple. That thing is hard-wired into his biology. I might kill him. No, I've got to be clever about this.'

Spinning on his heels, the Doctor tore over to the console, and his hands began flashing across the dials and levers, occasionally scanning something with his sonic screwdriver.

Martha sat down next to Waechter, holding one of his fragile, bony hands in hers. 'Trust him,' she said.

Waechter looked at her. 'I'm stuck here, aren't I?'

Martha shook her head. 'He'll find a way.'

The Doctor suddenly leapt away from the console and ran to Waechter's side, waving the sonic screwdriver. 'You're in the company of a genius, did you know that?' He beamed. 'I can jam your circuit's link to the Beacon, and once it's jammed I can deactivate it.'

Waechter looked at Martha, seemingly for reassurance, and then back at the Doctor. 'And then you can take me home?'

'Oh, yes!' The Doctor leaned in close to Waechter's neck. 'This might sting a touch,' he warned.

Martha knew immediately that 'sting a touch' meant it would hurt like crazy, so she gripped the old man's hand tightly. The buzzing blue tip of the sonic screwdriver hovered over the centre of the chip, and the surface electronics began to shimmer and vibrate.

Waechter screwed his eyes up as he began to feel waves of heat pulsate out from his neck. Suddenly a shower of sparks erupted from his neck, but the Doctor kept on working, his tongue poking between his lips.

As Martha held Waechter's hand she began to feel it swelling in her grip, and she looked down. As she unfurled her fingers she realised in horror that she was holding not an old man's hand, but something that resembled a claw bristling with tough, spiny hairs. She dropped it and backed away.

'Doctor,' she whispered.

The Doctor looked over, following the direction of her gaze. 'Oh,' he said. 'Now that's not fair!'

Waechter, his face still contorted with pain, looked at his hand. 'What's happening to me?'

His face grim, the Doctor's shoulders sagged with realisation. 'Of course! It's a new brain I need, Martha. This one's getting tired! I know what's happening!' Martha looked up at him, confused.

'Don't you see?' He was bursting with energy. 'Oh, lazy, lazy brain, Doctor! I know what this is all about.'

Martha, frustrated, snapped, 'What?'

'It's the curse of this planet.' The Doctor straightened up. 'You were wrong, Waechter. The inhabitants haven't gone anywhere, they've not been murdered. They're still here. They've evolved into these alien creatures.'

Martha looked on in horror as Waechter's arm began to twist and elongate, transforming into something horribly similar to a spider's leg.

The Doctor, fascinated, popped his glasses on. 'It's got to be the influence of the wormhole. Not only has it given the inhabitants incredible psychic powers, it's also irradiated their bodies with who knows how many thousands of types of alien DNA that have passed through the Vortex.'

Waechter cried out in agony, his right arm cracking and splintering as it doubled in length. 'Please, help me!'

'It's the chip,' the Doctor said. 'His humanity was being held in check by the chip. That was what was stopping him from turning into one of those things. There's got to be something I can do!' He turned on the sonic screwdriver again, and the circuit rippled and spat sparks. 'I can do this!'

Waechter screamed once more, his face contorting in agony. His jaw suddenly began to mutate, distorting into

two separate mandibles. 'I am not one of those things!' Waechter spat.

'You're making it worse!' Martha shouted.

The Doctor turned off the screwdriver. 'No! No! No!

Why can't I do this?'

The old man's tongue poked between his lips, now blackened and swollen. It flickered in and out, like a snake

scenting the air. The Doctor took a deep breath, and ran the palms of his hands over his strained face.

'Doctor?' Martha said urgently.

'OK!' he snapped, and knelt down in front of Waechter. 'Listen to me. If I destroy that chip, you will turn into one of these creatures. But if I repair it to keep you human, then I can't take you away from here. I'm sorry. One way or the other, you're going to have to stay. There's nothing else I can do. I really am so sorry. You have to tell me what you want me to do. Waechter?'

The old man brandished his claw-like protuberance, staring in utter horror at it. 'Is this all that my life has been about?' he cried. 'Just waiting for this?'

The Doctor continued urgently. 'Please! What do you want me to do?'

And as Waechter struggled to make his decision, and the Doctor and Martha waited with bated breath, the sound of weeping could be heard . . . from outside on the snow-blasted wastes. The creatures – his people – were waiting, too.

Waechter reached out a twisted claw and rested it gently on the Doctor's shoulder. 'Your identification paper . . .'

'The psychic paper?'

'Yes. May I see it again? Please?'

The Doctor reached into his jacket, and pulled out the wallet. He slowly opened it, showing it to Waechter. The old man stared deep into its intuitive heart and his reaction this time was sedate, almost serene.

'Thank you,' he said softly.

The Doctor closed the wallet and tucked it away. 'What did you see?'

Waechter leant back in the chair, and closed his eyes. 'An end. And a beginning. Running free. Never lonely again.' He opened his eyes, and smiled. 'I owe you my thanks.'

The Doctor waved his hand in front of his face. 'Nonsense.'

'It's our custom here, Doctor. I owe you a gift. And the only gift I have of value is my knowledge of the future.'

The Doctor stood up, frowning, and backed away slightly. 'I'm not sure it's wise to know what's coming. More fun that way.'

Ignoring him, Waechter turned to Martha. 'Look to your family. Protect them. They will need you to be strong, so very strong, Martha Jones.'

Martha's face clouded with confusion. 'What do you mean?'

Waechter looked up at the Doctor. 'And for you, Time

Lord, there are endings coming. There will be loss and death—'

'Please,' the Doctor broke in. 'Don't.'

Waechter looked down at his hooked, clawed hands. His breathing shallow and rasping. When he looked up again, his eyes were shot green, pulsing with inner light.

'Please destroy this thing in my neck,' he said, his voice barely a whisper. 'Let me go. I want to be with my people.'

The Doctor leant forward, activating the sonic screwdriver, disabling the circuit. An incandescent shower of sparks erupted from the old man's neck, and his back suddenly arched, his face contorted in a rictus of pain. New bolts of agonising pain wracked his body. He gasped for air.

He fell to his knees and then forward on his hands. As his bone and muscle bent and reformed themselves, his face began to distort, bulging, puckering and swelling into some new creature. Martha turned away, and the Doctor watched her cross to the console.

'Martha?' he asked.

'I don't want to see,' she told him.

Behind her, the Doctor gently helped the creature to its feet. It swung its head round to look at the Doctor, its bulbous, arachnid eyes peering quizzically at him. And then, the creature bowed its head, respectfully.

'I'll help you outside,' the Doctor murmured. He pushed the doors open, and freezing air billowed into the console room.

Martha stood utterly still at the console, listening to the click-clack of Waechter's new feet on the metal TARDIS floor, her face streaked with tears.

Martha could hear that Waechter had paused by the door, but still she couldn't bring herself to turn around. Was he waiting for some sign, some gesture from her? Feeling guilty and selfish, she sighed, and turned slowly to face him, dreading what she might see. But he had already gone, stepped out into the snow. The Doctor solemnly closed the door, and sauntered back up towards Martha. He put his arm around her shoulders, and pulled her close for a moment.

'I love a happy ending,' he said.

Martha looked up at him. 'What now?' she said.

'Oh, you know. A bit more jiggery pokery,' he beamed.

'You know, Martha Jones, I think that Beacon should start transmitting a very different message.'

'Like what?'

'Something more appropriate. What do you say, eh?

How about . . . a protected planet of special scientific interest,' he ventured.

As the Doctor began to set the coordinates on the console for the Beacon, and the central column began to rise and fall, Martha asked, 'He will be all right, won't he?'

The Doctor stared at the console's pulsing lights, and for a moment he looked surprisingly optimistic. 'Maybe, maybe not,' he said. 'But, there's one thing he will be, Martha.'

'Oh yeah? What's that?' she asked.

The Doctor twisted a button on the console. 'Brilliant!'


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25**

After resetting the Beacon on Agelaos to transmit a signal which advised passers by that the planet was a site of special scientific interest and not to be disturbed, the Doctor sent the TARDIS back into the Vortex and on to their next adventure.

'Hmmm, that's interesting,' the Doctor said as he studied the monitor hanging over the console.

'What is?' asked Martha, knowing that tone of voice he used when he'd found something to investigate.

'There's a ship hurtling between the stars, apparently on autopilot, with fluctuating power reserves and about to go into catastrophic failure . . . but there's no distress signal. Doesn't that strike you as odd?'

'I don't know about odd, it seems to happen a lot out here. I mean, there was the Castor, the SS Pentallian, then the Brilliant . . .'

'Wellll, there is a lot space out here to get into trouble in; and lots of ships to get into trouble. Not all ships are as robust and reliable as the TARDIS you know.'

Martha managed to stifle the laugh that was forming in her throat. She was sure the Doctor and the TARDIS would be offended by her derision. 'So are we going to be good neighbours and see if they need any help?'

He gave her his enthusiastic smile. 'Thought you'd never ask.' He commenced his usual dance around the console as the Time Rotor started to pump up and down, taking them inside the limping ship.

As it turned out though, the people on board the ailing ship weren't right neighbourly.

There were six of them – no, seven, Martha realised. She was just able to make out the seventh man, in the gloom behind the others. The passage was too narrow for them to stand more than three abreast and the lighting strips set into the low ceiling were only putting out a weak, flickering luminescence.

The men were armed with an assortment of crude weapons: metal bars, strips of metal sharpened into ragged-looking knives. One of them, Martha noticed, was brandishing a large spanner, as if he had raided a toolbox before joining the others.

'Let her go,' one of them said. He was tall and powerfully built, his hair cropped short. He wore a plain grey coverall that had been patched in a couple of places. From what Martha could make out in the poor light, the others in the group were equally well built and wore similar coveralls, each bearing their own pattern of stains and repairs.

The man behind Martha said nothing, but took a step back. The painful way he held Martha's arms twisted up into the middle of her back meant that she had no choice but to take a step back, too. On the floor between Martha and the armed men, the Doctor eased himself up off his knees. As he straightened, he gingerly pressed his hand against the base of his skull.

'Well, now that was unexpected,' he said. He had been standing with his back to Martha, facing the armed men who had come pounding along the corridor, shouting for someone called 'Breed' not to move.

The only other person in the corridor was the lone, unarmed figure who had half-run, half-stumbled into them a moment or two earlier; this, Martha assumed, must be

Breed.

Seeing the weapons in their hands, the Doctor had stepped forward, smiling. He'd spread his arms and his long coat formed a curtain between the armed group and their quarry.

'Hello! I'm the Doctor. Maybe I could—' That was when Breed had hit him – a single punch, hard, at the base of his skull. Martha didn't need her medical training to know that punch could cause some serious damage. The Doctor had dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

The next thing Martha knew was that someone was behind her and had hold of her arms and, if she tried to move them, they hurt. A lot.

'You think that's going to stop us?' The leader of the armed group spoke again. The grip on Martha's arms shifted, eased for a moment, then tightened, just as an arm slid across her throat. It suddenly became much less comfortable to take a breath.

'OK, that's enough. Hold it right there!' the Doctor said. He was on his feet and his voice had taken on a harder edge. 'Before anyone gets hurt and I have to do something I might regret.'

Everything seemed to happen at once. The armed men

lunged forward as if they were a single animal, teeth

bared, weapons poised to strike. Martha felt the arm

clamp more tightly across her throat. She choked,

struggling for breath as she was dragged backwards, away from the Doctor and the armed men who now seemed to be having trouble getting past him.

The Doctor seemed to have tripped and stumbled into the path of the armed men and, however much they shouted at him and whichever way they tried to get around him, they just couldn't get past. As she was hauled along the corridor, now moving so quickly that she was running backwards on tip-toe, held up by the same arm that was choking her, the scene receded into the gloom.

Grey mist edged her vision. For a heartbeat she felt as if she was floating, held up by the bubble of her last breath. Then the bubble burst and she was falling.

'Oops. So sorry. Clumsy old me.' The Doctor lurched suddenly across the corridor. The armed gang tried to push past him, but somehow he was always in their way, arms out, pushing them back as he righted himself, only to lose his footing yet again and flounder back into their path.

The gang's leader swore and jabbed his makeshift blade at the Doctor but found himself clutching air. The weapon had vanished.

'Is this yours?' the Doctor asked innocently as he offered the knife to another member of the group – who hardly had time to shake his head before he was holding the knife and the metal bar he had been carrying found its

way into the hand of one of his companions.

'If you hold this and I give this to you, then I can take that and give it to you to look after . . ..' Words cascaded from the Doctor as the men's weapons moved from hand to fist – at one point, a particularly thin and wicked looking blade seemed to be plucked from behind its erstwhile owner's ear – apparently under some mysterious power of their own.

Like the captive audience of an insanely gifted illusionist, they were unable to keep a firm grasp on their weapons until Breed was . . . Gone.

The Doctor glanced down the now-empty corridor and stopped, back on exactly the spot he had been standing when the men first lunged forward.

'So,' he said, hands now jammed in his pockets. 'Which one of you is going to take me to your leader?'

* * *

The sounds of struggle filled the room. Wherever she looked, Martha saw bodies locked in conflict. Ragged blades stabbed and slashed.

'Stop!' she found herself shouting. 'Stop this!'

A colonist and a clone called an Artificial, grappling for control of the colonist's jagged blade, collided with Martha, slamming her into the wall. Stars flashed across her vision.

'Martha!' Romea ran towards her . . . until she was grabbed by the collar of her coverall and jerked backwards, into the arms of a colonist. Martha shook away the stars and looked up. A colonist stood over her. In his raised fist he held a large spanner.

'Have we met?' Martha asked. The spanner began its descent. Martha's attacker was slammed aside by an Artificial – was that the one who called himself Edison? All around her, colonists and Artificials struggled with one another, but suddenly Martha had clear space on every side.

'Stop this!' she shouted again. 'This is bigger than love. Or rules. This is about survival!'

As if in reaction to her words, those fighting all around her stumbled, pressing their hands to their temples or over their ears, shaking their heads, while from above her came a familiar voice:

'Quite right, Martha. Now listen, all of you – Stop. Right now!' The Doctor's last words brought some of the colonists and Artificials to their knees, hands now firmly clamped over their ears.

On the faces of those nearest to her, Martha could see incomprehension and the beginnings of fear. Looking up, she saw the Doctor, standing on the same walkway from which the colonists had launched their attack. He smiled down at her, then lifted what looked like a microphone to his lips and spoke again.

'Thought that might get your attention. Ladies and Gentlemen, Colonists and . . . others. I have taken control of the ship.'

An Artificial turned his face towards Martha. A livid bruise covered one half of his forehead and blood ran freely from a lip split in two or three places.

'Your friend . . .' Martha assumed it must be Edison. The Artificial spoke too loudly, as if shouting to be heard over a noise that Martha couldn't hear. 'He's . . . in my head. How?'

With a crow-like flapping of his long coat, the Doctor vaulted the walkway rail and landed lightly on his rubber soled feet a short way from Martha.

'That's a very good question,' he flashed a grin. 'Fortunately, I know the answer.'

From the corner of her eye, Martha caught sight of sudden movement. A colonist staggered to his feet and swung a blunt tool of some sort at the nearest Artificial. Two long strides brought the Doctor within range.

Reaching down with his free hand he plucked the tool from the colonist's grasp. Something in the gentle-yet irresistible nature of the movement reminded her of the way he had prevented the gang of colonists from pursuing Edison down the corridor.

'I said this ends NOW!' the Doctor shouted into the microphone . . . and every colonist and Artificial in the room clutched at their heads. Some moaned, others cried out. 'In a moment I'm going to turn down the volume. If anyone tries anything nasty, I'll be turning it all the way up to eleven. I can't promise that won't cause permanent damage.'

Even in the middle of all the aggression around her, Martha couldn't help snorting a laugh. 'Eleven? Please don't tell me you're a fan of Spinal Tap.'

The Doctor gave her a puzzled frown, as though he didn't know what she was talking about. But he couldn't keep up the ruse, giving her a big grin and a wink. Martha gave a single laugh. Of course he'd be a fan of an irreverent, satirical parody.

He adjusted something on the stem of the microphone, which Martha thought looked like it had been put together on the run. With a chorus of relieved sighs and groans, the colonists and Artificials eased themselves off the floor and fell back into two opposing groups, staring warily at each other across the narrow strip of neutral space in which the Doctor and Martha stood. Romea, Martha noticed, stood with the Artificials.

'That's much better. This is for those in the loading bays and anywhere else on board. Just because I'm not there doesn't mean I won't know if you try anything violent, sneaky or otherwise really, really stupid. I am on very good terms with your ship's Pilot System and she is keeping an eye on all of you.'

The Doctor cleared his throat. 'I am speaking to everyone on board the generation ship 374926-slash-GN66 – and by the way, you really should consider coming up with a better name than that – because I want to stop you making the biggest mistake any of you are ever liable to make. To be honest, if you made this mistake it would have to be the biggest because none of you would live to make another one.'

'This is our ship! This is our mission!' Treve, the Chief Planetary Surveyor and ad hoc head of the Steering Council was standing at the walkway rail. His deputy, Laine stood beside him as he shouted down at the Doctor. They must have been closer behind him than he'd thought.

'Artificials are created to serve and when their purpose is done, to submit and be rendered down for future generations. The purity of the human gene-type must be preserved.' There was a murmur among the colonists. Some shuffled forward.

'Oh, things have gone much, much too far for that.' The Doctor shook his head, then pointed a finger at the feet of the advancing colonists. 'Eleven,' he said, his tone deceptively light as he jiggled the makeshift microphone loosely.

Martha smirked as the colonists withdrew.

'You're rational people: scientists, planetary engineers, world-builders. You all know that purity's not how life works. Life, evolution, creativity – they all thrive on variety, diversity, finding new combinations and seeing what happens. Half of you know that's already happened.' The Doctor shot a significant look at the Artificials.

Romea turned to Edison. 'What does he mean?'

Edison seemed unsure how to answer. He exchanged uncertain glances with the other Artificials.

'I . . . I know!' Romea gasped, eyes suddenly wide. 'I know what happened – and I'm seeing parts of it, flashes. Memories!' She looked at Edison. 'Your memories?'

The Artificial nodded.

'That's a girl!' the Doctor shouted. 'The connection's been there all along. All you have to do is recognise it!'

'I was . . . I was dying!' Romea stared across at the other colonists. 'We all were!'

A colonist cried out, his face wearing the same wide eyed expression as Romea. 'I . . . I see it too!'

There was another cry, then a gasp. Another colonist fell to her knees, sobbing, while another held his hands in front of his face and gazed at them as if they belonged to someone else.

Whatever was affecting the colonists was moving fast, jumping from one to another like a high-voltage charge. There was more weeping. Some of them just stood and shook their heads. Their faces were pictures of despair and wonder.

Martha shot the Doctor a puzzled look.

'The Pilot System explained things,' the Doctor began. 'I ran into her by accident, really. I was on my way here but must have taken a wrong turn around the atmospheric scrubbers. Anyway, I came across a system node and introduced myself.'

'Never mind that I was about to get my head bashed in,' Martha scolded him. But she was smiling.

The Doctor shrugged and returned her smile. 'One look at the surveillance system feed showed me things were getting bad down here. I had to come up with something that would stop everybody killing everybody else. That's when I caught sight of the Pilot's log.

'The Artificials are linked to the Pilot System. Cybernetic grafts performed in vitro.' The Doctor tapped the side of his head. 'It's how she wakes them up when it's time for a spot of housekeeping, or if there's a problem on board.'

'Like the cryo-system failing?'

'Exactly. Well, it turns out that the failure was catastrophic. Fatal.'

'We know that. Romea told me the rest. Half the colonists died.'

The Doctor shook his head. 'Not half. All of them.'

There was a sudden clatter from the metal ladder that led to the walkway. Treve had slid from about halfway up. He now clung grimly to the handrail, having regained his balance, but the look in his eyes was wild. Romea ran to him.

'Dad!' she cried softly. 'Oh, Dad.'

'Impossible!' Treve muttered, barely noticing his daughter. 'Impossible!'

'Some people are going to have a hard time getting used to this,' said the Doctor.

'Getting used to what?' Martha asked.

'Being Artificial,' the Doctor told her. 'When the cryosystem crashed, the shock killed a lot of the colonists outright. Others died more slowly. The Pilot System woke all available Artificials to revive the rest, but it was too late. So they did the next best thing: they downloaded the colonists' personality imprints and kicked the Artificial production line into high gear. They used up every last drop of raw material to create bodies for as many of the colonists as they could save. Even used DNA from the colonists' bodies to make sure they looked pretty much as they looked when they went into storage.'

'They grew new bodies for the colonists?' Martha looked from colonists to Artificials and back. Suddenly she was seeing how alike they looked, behind their superficial differences. 'Why didn't they tell them?'

'Thought it might freak them out, so soon after the shock of losing so many of their loved ones. Then, as tensions grew between them, they thought it might provoke violence. Much better that they discover it for themselves.'

'These new bodies have the same cybernetic link as the Artificials?' Martha asked. 'So that's why they could hear you in their heads, too?'

'They didn't know it was there. Your friend Romea was probably more in tune with it. That could be why she was attracted to an Artificial. As for the others, all they needed was a catalyst to get the process started.'

Martha was watching the colonists. They moved slowly, like people waking from a dream. The Artificials moved towards them cautiously, offering support and words of comfort.

'They were about to kill everyone to stop the Artificials acting like people,' she said. 'But everybody's artificial now.'

'Everybody's artificial now,' the Doctor said. 'But love is real.'

'I've been meaning to ask you,' Martha said. There was a distant look in the Doctor's eyes which made her anxious to change the subject. 'Back in the corridor you made some weird-looking moves. And you did it on the guy who tried to kick things off again. Time Lord kung fu?'

'Amtorian jiu-jitsu.' The faraway look became a smile, as if the Doctor was grateful to have the subject changed. 'Masters of the art vow never to use it in public. Just watching it can do spectators a mischief – headaches, nosebleeds and much worse.'

The Doctor guided Martha away, and they weaved their way towards the door, making their apologies and passing between the groups of Artificials and colonists – though,

Martha realised, that distinction had lost all meaning.

'Come on, let's see if I can't give the energy cells an upgrade, make the reserves last long enough to get them where they're going – provided they don't go starting up the fabricator prematurely.' His smile broadened and he spun his sonic screwdriver around one finger, gunslinger style.

'This Amtorian jiu-jitsu,' Martha said as they reached the door. 'You any good at it?'

'Not bad, actually. I always meant to take my final rank grading – very fetching belt: purple and puce . . .'

The travellers stepped into the dimly lit corridor. It would be the last time any of the generation ship's passengers would remember seeing them.

' . . . I just never got around to it. Takes ages, you see, and takes place any time, anywhere. You can be taking a bath, shopping or just walking down the street when one of the masters jumps out and attacks you . . .'

'He wouldn't happen to be called Kato would he?' she asked with a cheeky smile.

'Who?'

'The jiu-jitsu master . . . Kato? Like the manservant who used to attack Inspector Clouseau?'

They laughed together as they made their way back to the TARDIS, standing in a huge empty cargo space that, Martha hoped, would one day be full of fabricator-made equipment with which the colonists would begin to build a new world – for themselves and for those they once considered merely Artificial.

The Doctor was about to open the TARDIS door when he hesitated, key raised. 'Did you hear . . . ?' he said. His eyes darted this way and that, checking the shadows.

'You did tell the Amtorians you weren't taking that grading, didn't you?' Martha asked.

'Yes! Absolutely. Probably.' The Doctor slotted home the key and pushed the door open a little too urgently for Martha's liking. 'Perhaps . . . we should be going!'

He hurried up the ramp to the console and started the Time Rotor grinding up and down, before moving around to the monitor and dancing his fingers over the keyboard like a demented spider.

He straightened up and breathed a sigh of relief. 'Phew, that's a relief. The Amtorians registered my withdrawal from the course after I explained that I might not even be in any one place at any one time. A bit difficult for someone to surprise you when you're standing behind them knowing what they're about to do.'

'So you'll never get the purple and puce belt then,' Martha said with a chuckle.

'Au contraire. They awarded me an honorary belt when I surprised the surpriser as he was about to attack me.'

'What? You mean you used the TARDIS to cheat?'

'It wasn't cheating . . . I was using my initiative,' he whined like a child who had been found out.

She waggled her finger at him teasingly. 'You cheated.'

'Did not!'

'Did too,' she laughed as the TARDIS wound its way through the Vortex.


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter 26**

Out in the endless corridors of the Vortex, the police-box shell of the TARDIS spun and twisted, blown on the time winds like a ship at sea. Inside, in the organic jumble of the impossibly large central console room, Martha threw back her head and laughed out loud as the Doctor emerged from an interior door clutching a large inflatable banana.

'Oh, very elegant.'

'What?' The Doctor looked at her indignantly. Instead of his usual pinstripe suit and long, brown overcoat, he was in large baggy shorts, Hawaiian shirt and sombrero.

He pulled on a huge pair of sunglasses and threw his arms wide. 'Perfect for a beach holiday, don't you think?'

'Absolutely. Elton John would be proud of you!'

'I got these from him I think.' The Doctor pulled off the sunglasses and peered at them with a frown. 'Either him or the Mogadeesh of Replanak. Always get those two mixed up' He tossed the glasses onto the central console and thrust the banana at Martha. 'Now then.' He cracked his fingers. 'Where to go? Where to go?'

Martha wedged the inflatable behind the console room jump seat and joined him at the controls. She was dressed in a long, light dress and sandals, quite a change from her usual jeans and leather jacket. The Doctor has promised a break from their adventuring, a day or two away from danger and excitement. A chance to recharge their batteries.

The Doctor seemed more excited about it than she did.

He'd been unearthing all sorts of stuff from cupboards deep in the TARDIS; deck chairs, Lilos, even a bucket and spade. He twisted a control, peering at a readout. 'Sun, Sea and Sugary Shiplanos, that's what's in order.'

'Sugary what?'

'You've never had a Sugary Shiplano? Aw, you haven't lived! It's like a liquid candy floss, but it's lighter than air, so it floats and you have to hold onto the straw that you drink it through to stop it floating away.'

Martha shook her head. 'I never know if you're winding me up or not.'

'It's true! Were all the rage in 2050, bloke in Weston-super-Mare found the recipe in the wreck of an Androgum space hopper that crashed in the Bristol Channel.'

'So that's where we're going is it?' Martha folded her arms.

'All the beaches in time and space, and you're gonna take us to Weston-super-Mare?'

'Course not.' The Doctor grinned at her, darting around the console prodding at switches, twisting dials. 'I know a lovely little place, nice beach, good hotel, nice restaurants . . .'

The glass column in the centre of the control room started to glow with power, and hidden engines started to groan and grind. The entire room was shuddering. Martha gripped the edge of the console. She always loved this, the moment just before they stepped out into somewhere new.

There was a loud thump, and the TARDIS gave a lurch.

'OK,' Martha's eyes were shining. 'Where are we?'

The Doctor snatched his sunglasses off the console, grabbed her by the hand and dragged her towards the door. 'Saudi Arabia. Late twenty-first century. Best Beach of the Century in Bartholomew's Planetary Gazetteer and Time Traveller's Guide.'

He hauled open the door and Martha gave a yelp of surprise as a blast of icy wind hit them. The Doctor stared in disbelief at the snow and ice that stretched out ahead of them.

'Sun, sea and Sugary Shiplanos?' gasped Martha, glaring at him and desperately trying to rub some warmth back into her bare arms.

The Doctor gave a big sigh and wiped the snow from his sunglasses. 'Don't suppose you'd fancy a frozen Shiplano instead?'

The locked the door of the TARDIS, thrust the key deep into his jacket pocket and wandered over to where Martha was waiting for him. He was now in his usual suit and coat, and Martha had changed into clothes more suitable for an arctic environment – heavy ski pants and a thick parka.

The Doctor's earlier exuberance had given way to puzzlement. He had checked the readings on the console and everything appeared to be normal, no anomalies or temporal distortions.

'So, have you worked out where we are yet?' Martha asked, shivering.

'Right where we should be.' The Doctor squinted through the glaring snow. 'Persian Gulf, just down the coast from Dubai.' He nodded through the swirling snow. 'World's tallest hotel should be that way. The Rose Tower.'

'It would be called that,' Martha muttered jealously under her breath.

The Doctor shot her a quizzical glance. Martha just smiled sweetly at him. 'So how come we've ended up in a blizzard then?'

'Dunno.' He set off across the snow, coat tails flapping.

Martha hurried after him. 'Hang on a minute, where are we heading off to then? Bit daft heading off with the visibility like this. Can't we just hop back into the TARDIS and try again?'

'Gotta find out what's gone wrong first. Can't just go shooting off into time and space without checking where we are, can we?'

He set off through the driving snow, seemingly oblivious to the cold and biting wind. Martha groaned and pulled up the hood of her parka, all chances of a relaxing beach holiday getting further behind every minute. She struggled after the retreating figure, her boots sinking deep into the snow. It was madness.

Despite the Doctor's assurances, Martha was sure that the

Persian Gulf was the last place on Earth that they were. In fact, there was a fair chance that they weren't on Earth at all.

She struggled up a steep incline. The Doctor was standing at the top, peering through the worsening storm. Her feet skidded on the icy rock and she caught hold of the Doctor's arm.

He nodded through the snow. 'There's something over there. A cliff of some kind.'

'Cliffs. Great.' Martha could see nothing but greyness through the swirl of white. 'Perhaps we can do some rock climbing instead of sunbathing.'

'Exactly.' The Doctor grinned at her. 'Come on.'

Keeping a firm grip on his arm Martha followed him over to what seemed like a sheer cliff face, caked in snow and ice. Ridiculously sheer in fact. Martha craned her neck back. 'It goes up for ever.'

The Doctor was frowning. 'Yes. It does seem that way.' He reached out and touched the surface. 'Too smooth to be natural.'

'Man-made?'

'Dunno.' The Doctor rubbed the surface with his sleeve. 'Hang on . . . I can see something. Through the ice.'

He fumbled in the pocket of his coat and pulled out a stubby cylinder of metal. His sonic screwdriver. He made a few adjustments and held it out in front of him, pushing Martha behind him.

'Just in case.'

There was a flare of blue light and a high-pitched whine as the sonic vibrations cracked and crazed the ice surface. Frozen shards tumbled into the snow and a warm, glowing light started to pierce the gloom.

The Doctor bent down and rubbed at the patch he had cleared with his hand. He stepped back abruptly, a startled expression on his face.

Martha caught her breath, 'What is it?'

The Doctor gestured towards the hole. 'See for yourself.'

Hunkering down, Martha peered into the light. She stared at the face looking back at her. A young woman. A young woman in a bikini. With a laugh, the woman waved and ran off. Martha could see along a vast expanse of golden sand, heaving with holidaymakers. The sky overhead was a brilliant blue, the sea alive with the sails of yachts. Martha tapped at the cliff with her knuckles. It was glass. She looked up at the Doctor in disbelief. 'It's a dome. We're inside a huge glass dome. On the beach.'

'Hah!' The Doctor hauled her to her feet and twirled her round in the snow. 'How could you ever have doubted me?!'

* * *

Martha clambered through the remains of Snowglobe 7 airlock and picked her way carefully through the piles of broken glass. Where previously there had been snow and ice and raging winds, there was now only wet, steaming rock. In the distance, she could see the familiar police-box shape of the TARDIS. The Doctor was standing outside it, hands thrust deep into his pockets, staring up at the evening sky.

Glass crunching underfoot, Martha hurried over to him.

He looked down as she approached, his lean face breaking into a dazzling smile. 'Martha Jones! Am I glad to see you.' He threw his arms around her and gave her a huge hug.

Martha hugged him back. 'Sorry, Doctor.'

He looked at her, puzzled. 'Sorry? What for?'

'You left me to look after Cowley. I let her escape. Let her cause all this.'

Beth Cowley, the director of the Snowglobe project had taken a case of alien spores and spread them to the wind in an attempt to turn everyone on the planet into a host for the alien species.

'I'm not sure that you'd have been able to do much to stop Miss Cowley. From the little I knew of her, she was quite a formidable lady, and coupled with the psychic influence of the Gappa . . .'

'Gappa?' Martha raised a quizzical eyebrow. 'Is that what they were called?'

The Doctor nodded sadly. 'The last of their kind.'

'And you wanted to save them.'

'I thought I could.' The Doctor thrust his hands back into his pockets, kicking at the rock with his trainers. 'I wanted to try and stop another race from vanishing from the universe, but the universe had already decided that it was their time to die.'

He looked at Martha with sadness in his eyes. 'The

Gappa should never have survived; they should all have been dead a hundred thousand years ago. Their life cycle was a biological dead end, an aberration of evolution. It was only the good intentions of another species that allowed them to cheat death, a well-meaning preservation effort that could have meant the end of all life on Earth.'

'And is that what this was?' Martha looked around the dome. 'A well-meaning preservation effort by a doomed species?'

'Nah.' The Doctor shook his head. 'This is human beings doing what they do best, surviving, adapting; confronting problems head-on. It's me who should be apologising to you. It's me that's ruined it. Millions of tonnes of Arctic ice, boiled away in an instant.'

'Yes; and how did you manage that exactly?'

'Like I said; a well-meaning preservation effort. The

Gappa was being transported from its home planet to be preserved in some kind of zoo or safari park or something.

But they never got there. They crashed.'

'On Earth?'

'Yup.'

'In the past.'

'In the Stone Age.'

'Hence the cave paintings.'

'Exactly! You were lucky. If the Gappa had managed to wipe out Homo sapiens, you lot would never have got off the first rung of civilisation. You'd just be another doomed world twirling towards extinction.'

Martha shivered. The wind was starting to pick up again. 'So these well-meaning scientists that crashed. That means there was a spacecraft, right?'

The Doctor nodded. 'Right. A great big state-of-the-art starship, with a state-of-the-art plasma fusion drive buried in the ice of the prehistoric Arctic since the last Ice Age.

Well, I say that. Most of it is probably still up there. They came in pretty hard. Ship broke into a dozen pieces or more.'

'But the engine ended up here?'

'Frozen in the same ice as the Gappa.'

'And you blew it up.'

'Used the TARDIS scanner to track down the fusion core. A hundred thousand years in the ice and still enough fuel to go critical. Masses of heat, no fallout. Good thing I found it, not you lot. They can be very dangerous in the wrong hands.'

Martha stared at him. Despite the flippancy of his comments, there was a deep sadness in the Doctor's eyes. He had hated destroying the Gappa. In the end, it had come down to a simple choice. Gappa or human. Kill or be killed. Thank God he was on their side.

She squeezed his arm. 'Do you know who they were then, these good Samaritans who crashed a hundred thousand years ago?'

The Doctor shook his head. 'Not a clue.'

'Wanna go and find out?'

The Doctor beamed at her. 'Martha Jones, you're a woman after my own heart.'

She was after his heart, and was about to point out how true (and cruel) that comment was when she was distracted by the sight of a huge robot squeezing out through the TARDIS doors.

'What?'

'Ah, Martha, meet Twelve. Twelve, this is my best friend, Martha Jones.'

'+PLEASED TO MEET YOU, MISS JONES,+' the construction robot said.

Martha started at the robot, momentarily dumbstruck.

She looked at the Doctor in disbelief. 'Surely we're not taking him with us?'

The Doctor's face fell. Twelve had saved him from the Gappa on more than one occasion as he had tried to find a solution to the problem. After the stress of the last few hours, the Doctor's hurt-little-boy expression was more than Martha could take. She burst out laughing.

Martha perched on an Outcrop of lichen-covered rock and watched though the Doctor's high-tech opera glasses as the group of hunters swathed in thick fur made their way slowly through the thick snow, heading south, following the mammoth herd, searching for food on the tundra.

She lowered the glasses and smiled, amazed – not for the first time – by how quickly she had got used to something as mind-boggling as being able to wander though her own prehistory.

The Doctor had programmed Twelve with a series of instructions for Mr Roberts on how to rebuild the robots' memory and a farewell message for nurse Marisha El-Sayed. Martha had been sad not to have a chance to say a proper goodbye but, as the Doctor had pointed out, they had just been responsible for the destruction of a major government scientific facility and that might not make them the most popular people on the planet.

She raised the glasses again, focusing on the tiny figure far below her. The Doctor was making his final sweep through the remains of the crashed spacecraft that had brought the Gappa to prehistoric Earth.

She and the Doctor had arrived earlier in the day, watching as the stricken craft had arced through the air like a fiery comet, clipping the top of the distant glacier in a gout of flame and ploughing nose-first into the valley below. The spacecraft had broken into a dozen pieces, just as the Doctor had predicted, the section housing the engines and the Gappa skidding to a halt on the ice sheet below them.

They had watched from the safety of the TARDIS as the alien had crawled through the wreckage and slowly made its way through the snow towards the glacier, and the future.

The Doctor had identified the ship as Modrakanian. As the sun had started to rise, he had left Martha on the top of the hill with his opera glasses, told her to watch and taken the TARDIS on a brief trip down into the valley.

As the sun had cleared the distant mountains, Martha had watched spellbound as the mammoth herd shook the last vestiges of the night's snow from their fur and, snorting and bellowing began the long journey south.

A more familiar bellowing echoed up from the valley, and the tiny, distant shape of the TARDIS faded away, reappearing a few seconds later alongside her.

The Doctor emerged, following Martha's gaze towards the distant mammoths and the hunters that tracked them. 'Fancy a mammoth steak for dinner?'

Martha grimaced. 'No, thank you!'

'Good for you. Puts hair on your chest.'

'Definitely no, then.' She clambered to her feet. 'Did you find them?'

The Doctor nodded solemnly. He had been determined to find the bodies of the crew of the doomed Modrakanian ship, to take them back home to their own planet for a proper burial. Martha guessed it was his way of making up for failing to save the Gappa.

'So, I guess its Modrakania next stop?'

'Yes!' The Doctor rubbed his hands together briskly.

'And then, if you don't mind, I'd like to go somewhere where they've never heard of snow.' Martha pulled her parka around her.

'That's fine by me.' The Doctor pushed open the TARDIS door and ushered Martha inside,

'Where did you have in mind?' she asked.

'Ever heard of Weston-super-Mare?'

She gave a short laugh, which was cut short when she saw the eight body bags on the floor. As a medical student she was used to seeing dead bodies, but it still didn't get any easier, knowing that people had lost their lives.

'I suppose it would have caused some sort of paradox if you'd have landed in their ship and stopped it from crashing in the first place,' Martha said sadly.

The Doctor blew out his breath. 'Yeah. It became an established event for us when we encountered the Gappa. After that, the events that led up to it had to be allowed to occur . . . including all the deaths I'm afraid.'

She came and stood next to him at the console as he started the Time Rotor. 'Don't you ever feel like saying "to hell with the rules" and changing the past to save lives?'

He gave her a stern look. 'Someone tried that once . . . let's just say it didn't end well. In fact, it ended exactly as it had started, with a man being hit by a car to save all of creation.'

Martha gave him a quizzical look, wondering if he was going to expand on the details, but he turned back to the console and contacted the Modrakanian space port authority to make the arrangements for the repatriation of the zoological expedition.


	27. Chapter 27

**Chapter 27**

Martha wasn't sure what she had expected the Modrakanian Centralised Administrative City to look like. She always imagined cities of the future to be elegant spires and towers like she'd seen on New Earth.

What she had seen however, was a facility that looked like any large airport on her home planet. The sky was blue, the clouds were white and fluffy, and the city in the distance looked like Huston, Texas; all metal and glass skyscrapers.

The Modrakanians had been very grateful to them for returning the scientist's bodies, and asked if the Doctor and Martha would stay for funeral ceremony. The Doctor agreed, seeing it as part of his penance for not being able to save the Gappa.

The relatives of the deceased came and gave thanks to them for bringing back their loved ones, and the Minister for Off-World Affairs had awarded them the freedom of Modrakanian, making them honorary citizens of the planet.

To break the solemn mood, the Doctor said he was taking her to a place where they could have some fun. Martha opened the TARDIS door and was hit by a wall of noise. Bleeps, dings, and whistles, accompanied by screams of laughter from young children.

The TARDIS had landed in between a ghost train and a tin can alley rifle range, and seemed to blend in perfectly. Opposite the TARDIS were rows of one armed bandits, flashing their bright lights and playing happy tunes to attract the gamblers.

Martha stepped onto the wooden floor, looking around with a big grin on her face, the sadness of the last few hours forgotten. 'Where is this?'

'The Grand Pier, Weston super Mare,' he said with a knowing smile. 'C'mon, the Crazy House over there is brilliant.' He grabbed her hand and hurried through the crowds.

A few hours later, they were leaning on the rail that ran around the pier, eating cones of chips and looking out over the Bristol Channel towards the Atlantic Ocean.

'Chips in a paper cone, that's genius!' the Doctor said as he bit into a chip.

'And look,' Martha said, pointing with a chip. 'The tides in.'

It was a standing joke with holiday makers that you never saw the sea at Weston, due to the fact that it receded so far at low tide.

'It does that twice a day you know,' he told her, as though she believed the myth. 'Second fastest tide on the planet. Mind you that's nothing compared to the tides on Felspoon. There the mountains move to meet the sea half way; causes one heck of a swell, the surfers love it.'

Martha laughed, not knowing if that was true or if it was one of his tales to make her laugh. If it was the latter, it certainly worked. She finished her chips and turned to lean her back on the rail, looking up at the white building of the pavilion.

'This has been great, it reminds me of when I was a kid on holiday, and there's no snow, no aliens . . .' she saw the look he gave her. 'There aren't, are there?'

'Well, not dangerous ones any way. Let's go and get an ice cream, and pay close attention to the woman in the kiosk . . . especially when she blinks.'

'No, you're kiddin' me?' she said with wide eyes. He smiled and waggled his eyebrows. 'You are kidding, right?'

* * *

'Edinburgh in 1759,' said Martha. 'A bit different to Weston super Mare in 2008.'

They were standing on the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle enjoying the view. The Doctor was telling her in that way he did, about how she was seeing something no one else would ever see again.

Clear countryside, all the way down to the Firth of Forth:

Edinburgh before they built the bits of Edinburgh she remembered from that film. Then he told her why they'd needed to expand, turning to point down at the 80,000 people pushing their way through a daily life on the streets of the Old Town.

'Well,' he said. 'Just "the Town" at the moment, but . . .' He halted his history lecture, as he heard the clatter of hooves and wheels on the cobbles below.

They looked over the parapet and saw a stagecoach rattling down the street, the horses apparently spooked by the presence of a highwayman on the roof.

The Doctor flashed his manic grin. 'Runaway coach! C'mon.'

He grabbed her hand and set off at a run for the stone steps. He reached inside his long coat and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. 'Take this and use setting three four seven.'

'Three four seven?' Martha queried as she tried to keep up with him.

'Ultrasonic modulated waveform, it'll calm the horses down. Take a short cut through Grassmarket and get in front of them. I'll run along the bank here and jump onto the roof as it goes past.'

Martha didn't even have time to give her usual reaction of disbelief. 'Grassmarket, three four seven, right.'

The Doctor ran along the grassy bank at the foot of the castle, which was contained by a high stone wall, and leaped off the edge as the stagecoach careered past. He grabbed the luggage rail around the edge of the roof and crouched low as he tried to surf the stagecoach.

The longer this went on, the more likely it was that people would get hurt: the driver was doing his best to steer the horses as they bolted, but it was a losing battle. Plus he couldn't fight the natural urge to look over his shoulder at his attacker; the pale man was having as much trouble as the Doctor in keeping his balance as the stagecoach rocked, but he was still advancing.

'Hey,' the Doctor called to the man.

The pale man didn't even turn, just kept shuffling cautiously towards the driver. He was wearing the muddy long-coat of a farmer, possibly a poacher, but as yet he hadn't reached for the knife that was tucked into his belt. Instead, his pale hands were outstretched, as if the only blades he needed were his own sharp fingernails.

So far, the Doctor hadn't seen the man's face, just the lank strands of his hair flailing in the wind. He tried a different tack.

'Entschuldigen?' he called.

The pale man turned, and the Doctor got a brief flash of black marble eyes and a triumphant feeling. Then he saw a piece of the stagecoach roof splinter, and looked again: the pale man's shoulder now had a dry red tear in it where something had struck him, attracting his attention. The Doctor risked a glance behind him, and saw four red-jacketed soldiers firing from the steps down from the Castle.

'They're shooting at us!' cried a voice from below. The Doctor ducked low to avoid perforation, and stuck his head out over the edge of the stagecoach. There was a passenger sticking his head out of the window and waving wildly.

'Don't worry,' the Doctor called as the coach veered violently to the left. 'Just stay inside.'

The passenger gave him a strange look, and ducked back inside. The Doctor risked another look behind him, and saw the soldiers running after them whilst trying to reload their muskets. He was safe from that for a few moments, anyway. He pulled himself unsteadily to his feet and turned back to face forwards.

The pale man seemed to have lost interest in the driver, which was something. Instead, he was making shuffling steps towards the Doctor, those sharp little fingers outstretched.

Hold on a moment. 'Aren't you—' the Doctor started to shout to the passenger.

The stagecoach hit a loose cobble, and bucked into the air. The driver let out a cry and tried to keep hold of the reins and the coach and his wits, all in one messy manoeuvre. The coach tottered left, then teetered right, before deciding that perhaps it would remain on all four wheels for a few moments longer.

The Doctor, however, didn't have much time for relief: the pale man lost his footing as the coach kicked, and ended up diving for the Doctor, talons outstretched. Instead, he allowed himself a moment to wonder how Martha was doing. Then the pale man knocked him on his back.

Martha was doing what she normally did when the Doctor got involved with something . . . she was running. 'Three,' she panted. 'Four. Seven.'

A woman dressed as a novelty toilet-roll cover stepped out of her house to Martha's right, and nearly ended up flat on her bustle as Martha barged past. Martha didn't even look behind her, but she heard the decidedly ungentlemanly shouts coming from the lady's companion.

They weren't the first to be annoyed by her: as she ran down the High Street, she had been knocking people left, right and centre. The houses that towered up three and four storeys on either side of the wide road were the town houses of the great and the good, and there hadn't been a single soul she had barged past that had had so much as a smudge of dust on their person. Until she'd sent them sprawling in the gutter.

On her right, she saw the archway. The sign above it announced it as Fishmarket Close, although it looked like it was just a tunnel that burrowed deep into the cellars of the houses. Martha turned sharply and ran into the darkness, the smell of fish rushing up to greet her as she ran.

The ground sloped away from her feet at an alarming speed, and she knew that if she lost her footing for even a moment, she'd be tumbling. It took her a moment to realise that she had passed through the archway and was out in the fresh air again: as the ground dropped away, the tops of the houses remained on a level and the sunlight found it harder and harder to reach her.

The streets were even worse now she was off the Royal

Mile, filled with more people in worse clothes and splattered with a thick brown mud that she was starting to suspect wasn't actually mud. The houses seemed little more than tiny boxes, all piled high on top of each other like the estates in Tower Hamlets. Each had a metal spiral staircase outside it, leading up to the higher levels that looked barely big enough to let a child up comfortably.

The language grew fouler as she bumped and barged, and more than one person started throwing things after her. She had a momentary image of the houses on the Royal Mile as nothing more than a flimsy rubber mask, pulled aside to reveal the monstrous decay of the real city beneath . . .

Martha burst out of the street, and suddenly found herself blinking in the sunlight for a moment. She had never really pushed through a crowd of people running in the opposite direction before she'd met the Doctor. It wasn't something she particularly enjoyed. People were losing their footing and falling all around her, and the doctor in her wanted to stop and check they were all right.

The Doctor in her made her keep moving, pushing and swerving into every space she was forcing open. The sound of their screaming was deafening. She wasn't going to make it, she knew.

'Three. Four. Seven,' she panted.

Suddenly the crowd thinned around her. At the same time, their screams got louder as they realised the danger they were in was so much more imminent. They parted like water around her; eager to fill up the small space she had left them that much further from destruction. Another moment and Martha was alone, standing gasping for breath in the middle of the cobbled road. She had to bend double just to force the air into her lungs.

'Run, girl!' someone shouted, but she didn't see who. She stood up straight and composed herself. As she turned, she saw the stagecoach careering down the road towards her, the driver having given up all pretence at control and just looking for the right moment to jump.

She couldn't see the Doctor or the highwayman he'd been chasing. Perhaps they'd both fallen, and were lying broken further up the road. The streets were empty. After the press of the crowd, it felt more alien than any planet she'd set foot on. The horses were heading straight for her, teeth bared. She held up a hand, and didn't flinch. 'Three four seven,' she said.

In some ways, the Doctor supposed, it could be considered quite restful. OK, so he was in very real danger of getting a terminal haircut from the buildings lining the Cowgate, but at least he was lying down. And he had the wind blowing through his hair, an advantage that the stagecoach's bald driver was completely missing out on.

All he needed was the certainty of being alive when the coach stopped, and it would be a very jolly afternoon's ride. The pale man was kneeling over the Doctor, having seemingly no interest in picking himself up and resuming his attack on the driver. Nor was he attacking the Doctor, as such.

Yes, he was flailing those sharp fingernails around, but if it was an attack it was a particularly unfocused one. An unbiased observer might be hard pushed to decide if the nails were aimed at the Doctor, or merely trying to claw their way through the stagecoach roof.

Certainly the pale man wasn't looking at him as the blows fell: he stared glassily into space, one pupil larger than the other. The Doctor filed the information in case it was important later.

The Doctor looked at the driver, who glanced back apologetically. 'Don't worry,' the Doctor shouted. 'I've got a friend.'

The stagecoach bounced again, and the Doctor's pale attacker rolled across the roof. For a moment, he looked as if he might fall, but at the last minute he twisted and somehow ended up back on his feet. As the pale man rolled his glassy eyes in the Doctor's vague direction, a thin sliver of drool ran down his chin.

'I can help you,' the Doctor told him.

A musket shot rang out.

Martha swallowed hard, and closed her eyes.

'Three four seven,' she said.

The sonic screwdriver felt heavy in her hand, but she held it high. Her thumb found the switch without her having to look, and she pressed it down. She couldn't help flinching, even though she knew it wasn't going to explode in her hand.

Probably wasn't going to explode in her hand. It wasn't making any sound, or at least none that she could hear. She risked a peek through one squinting eye.

The horses were nearly on top of her. Her mouth fell open and her eyes opened wide. The stagecoach was hurtling towards her, the driver crossing himself and jumping from his perch to land awkwardly on the cobbles below. But she could see the highwayman and the Doctor, standing on the roof of the coach as if they were meeting in a bar for the first time.

The Doctor was holding his hand out to the highwayman, saying something the clatter of hoof-beats was drowning out.

He was incredible.

There was the faint sound of a car backfiring that

Martha barely noticed, until she remembered that this was a good couple of hundred years before internal combustion. The highwayman on the roof twitched and tumbled from the stagecoach roof.

Martha barely had the time to register that he'd been shot before her heart leapt at the sight of the Doctor launching himself after him. The two met in mid-air, as the Doctor spun to protect the highwayman from the stone cobbles.

Just incredible.

Martha realised she was still standing in the path of the stagecoach. It was too late, far too late. Martha could see those who had managed to get themselves out of the exact place she was standing looking back at her with a mixture of sympathy and excitement. This would be one to tell the grandchildren about, no doubt. All Martha could do was worry about whether the Doctor had hurt himself in the fall.

The horses let out a strange noise and slowed. It was so odd to see: one moment, the horses were charging foam-mouthed towards her and she had no chance of survival; the next, they were starting to slow, flicking their manes about as if they were in an equine shampoo advert. Martha felt a moment of elation, before she realised that the stagecoach itself wasn't slowing down.

As the horses both moved to the left, suddenly interested in the buildings lining the street, the stagecoach sped on at top speed. The gathered crowd didn't know what to do, and neither did the horses. They dug their feet in indignantly as the coach pulled them backwards down the road, their hooves grinding sparks from the rough stone.

Martha let her hand drop and made a run for the dubious protection of a pub. She felt a rush of wind try to pull her jacket from her back, but didn't stop. As she jumped, she ended up clutching the hand of a young, red haired boy, who was himself hanging precariously from the jacket of a heavy-set man who didn't look much like he wanted to be hung from.

Other hands came down to sweep her up, and for a moment she let herself fall into them. It felt like having her mother hug her after a nasty tumble. When she looked behind her, the stagecoach had spun to a halt ten yards down the road. The cobblestones were scuffed, and the coach was sideways on to the road, but otherwise you'd be hard pushed to guess that anything was wrong.

The horses pawed at the ground skittishly, and tried hard not to catch each other's eye. Martha had the strangest feeling that they were embarrassed. She smiled, and took her thumb from the sonic screwdriver.


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter 28**

It was 1997, and a beautiful bright day, the sky a fantastic shade of blue that made Martha think of picnics and beer gardens. Instead, they were standing at the top of what the Doctor informed her was called Calton Hill, in the centre of a triangle that was made by the row of Greek looking columns, a Roman-looking monument and something that could easily have been a lighthouse.

They were anything but alone up here: the Edinburgh Festival was in full swing, and the city was at its busiest. The Doctor had promised that he'd take her to see a good production of Measure for Measure later on, but for now he was just watching over the city with a huge grin on his face.

'Isn't it marvellous?' he said with a grin.

Martha looked out at the view. Most of what she could see hadn't even been built the last time she was here, the New Town sprawling out away from the Old and racing down towards the Firth of Forth. The houses looked grand and the streets wide, but Martha couldn't quite forget the narrow rooms with the low ceilings that the people in the Old Town had been forced to live in 240 years ago, crammed on top of each other like makeshift tower blocks.

'They're still there,' the Doctor said, doing his mind reading act. 'The Closes: underneath the Royal Exchange. Well, the City Chambers now: they say the merchants didn't want to leave the streets, but I think they were more worried another monster was going to come running out.'

Martha gave a little shudder. If she spoke to anybody here about living in a kind of 18th century shanty town, it would just be ancient history to them. But to her it was yesterday. Only yesterday, 240 years ago when she'd been chased through those dark, narrow passageways of the Closes by an alien modular organism made up of hundreds of cloned hands.

Each hand was a biological unit, a piece of a jigsaw that was Onk Ndell Kith, the whole package. It hadn't started out as a human hand of course, but when it gripped the hand of the anatomist Alexander Munro, it used his DNA to try and repair itself. The repair was incomplete, and Kith would have killed all the people in Edinburgh to try and repair itself with their DNA.

It was when the Doctor offered his own DNA that the creature found out about the TARDIS. What a prize that would be, travelling through all of time and space, gathering DNA wherever it chose to go. And that was when the Doctor had to stop it, sending it back into the Nor' Loch from where it had first arrived on this planet.

'What about the Loch?' Martha asked. 'What happened to that?'

The Doctor's smile faltered. 'The hands were dead before they hit the water,' he said sadly, guiltily. 'But they didn't want to take any chances: they had the Loch filled in. Later on, they built the Princes Street Gardens on top. See that big spiky tower over there? That's the Scott Monument. That's where the Gardens are.'

Martha looked. She thought she could just see the belt of greenery at the foot of Castle Hill. Strange to think of all those little hands buried under there. She remembered trying to stop it climbing the castle wall by using the sonic screwdriver, what it had felt like when the hands became detached from the whole and rained down on her, scratching and choking her as she'd stood and held on.

She looked around the hilltop: there were families there with little children, old couples sitting holding hands on the benches; a woman about Martha's age with bottle blonde hair jumped down from the base of the Greek columns and went over on her ankle, laughing at her own clumsiness. Martha couldn't imagine what it would be like if the hands came back.

She remembered the walking dead with the hands gripping their chests to animate them. Chasing the dead vagabond Arthur King on the stagecoach through the Grassmarket. If it happened again now, the locals would probably think it was a stunt for some show or other, and tut to themselves about how much money the students had to waste.

'There's one thing I don't understand,' Martha said. The

Doctor looked at her questioningly. 'The hands were broken, yes? They thought the dead bodies were that Kith thing, and they were just joining the rest of him? But they all still hung around together – the zombies didn't just wander off on their own.'

'The mechanism that made them combine had been damaged,' the Doctor said, a little guiltily. Martha could guess how it had been undamaged. 'But the psychic connection that made them group together was still there. That's why any damage Monro did with his electricity to the one hand managed to affect all the others under the Loch. They still wanted to find the other hands and join together. They just couldn't remember how.'

'So why was that first one chasing Benjamin Franklin?'

The Doctor nodded, looking back over the city. 'Only one reason I can think of,' he admitted quietly.

'He had a hand,' Martha said. Her heart beat a little harder.

'Probably the last one on Earth. They must have given it to him just before they packed him onto that stagecoach,' the Doctor said, still looking off into the distance. Was he remembering watching those hands fall into the Loch? He couldn't feel sorry for them, surely? 'All the others would have been destroyed by the lightning. Franklin's should have been safely on the way to London.'

'So he could clone himself?' Martha asked.

'Franklin?' the Doctor shook his head. 'I doubt it. The initial damage was a mistake. I don't think anybody but Monro could recreate it, and even then it would probably have taken him a good couple of years experimenting.'

'But Monro could do it?'

The Doctor shrugged casually.

'So shouldn't we be trying to get it back?' Martha suggested.

The Doctor spun around, his freshly laundered coat spinning with him. The smile was back on his face, the cheeky one that said he was going to suggest something particularly naughty. The one that Martha couldn't help but return, despite all her good arguments to the contrary.

'Martha Jones, your lack of knowledge about the history of medicine is truly shocking,' he mocked gently. 'Haven't you ever studied Edinburgh University's collection of Alexander Monros?'

She had to admit that she hadn't.

'Well, you can look it up next time we're near a library,' he said, stepping off with authority. 'In the meantime, why don't we go and try one of the local delicacies?'

'Haggis?' Martha wrinkled her nose.

The Doctor smiled. 'Chips,' he said, waggling his eyebrows. 'With salt and sauce.'

And they walked down Calton Hill arm in arm to Princes Street where they crossed North Bridge which took them to the Golden Mile. There were a bewildering array of street performers entertaining the passers-by. They passed acrobats, jugglers, mime artists and dancers as they made their way to the chip shop.

Having purchased their meal, they wandered down the street past stilt walkers and people on tall unicycles. A troupe of mummers were acting out a comedy sketch, and a barber shop quartet were giving an incredible rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody.

As they finished their chips, they came to the beautiful Gothic building of the Bedlam Theatre, where a group calling themselves Illyria were giving a performance of Measure for Measure.

'Here we are,' the Doctor said. 'Another offering from our old mate Will, about five years after we met him. It's often referred to as one of his problem plays.'

'Why's that then?' Martha asked.

'Well, it's classified as a comedy, but just because it doesn't end in tragedy, doesn't make it funny. The play's main themes include justice, mortality and mercy in Vienna, and the dichotomy between corruption and purity: "some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall",' he explained as they entered the theatre.

When they were leaving the theatre after the performance, Martha was thanking the Doctor for explaining Will's flowery language as the play went along. 'I don't think I'd have understood half of it without you.'

'Ah, you'd probably have gotten the gist of it, but when you understand the Elizabethan dialect, you get the subtleties and in jokes,' he said as they made their way back to the TARDIS.

'A heart for a heart and a deer for a deer,' Martha laughed, remembering Will trying one of his play-on-words on her.

Back at the TARDIS, the Doctor examined the monitor. 'What about a 'Scooby-Doo' style mystery?' he asked her.

'Yeah, go on then; do I get to peel the mask off the bad guy at the end?' she said with a laugh.

'I'd have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for you pesky kids,' he replied, laughing with her. 'Well, this has got all the ingredients, a big, old, empty house, and people disappearing.'

'Sounds perfect.'

'And something Scooby doesn't have; temporal disturbances.' He threw the switch, slammed the lever, and the TARDIS wheezed across the Vortex. 'Allonz-y.'

'So, where are we then,' Martha asked as she felt the TARDIS land with a gentle bump.

'Wester Drumlin,' he said in a "Vincent Price" voice, shutting down the console.

'Ooh, it even sounds like something out of Scooby-Doo,' she said, walking down the ramp, opening the door, and stepping outside. 'Hah, it's even got the gothic statues to add to the atmosphere,' she called to him through the gap in the door.

He smiled and sauntered down the ramp, stepping outside and closing the door. 'Where are they then?' he asked her, looking around to see where she had gone. Had he actually been in an episode of Scooby-Doo, he would have heard the audience shout 'it's behind you'.

* * *

Martha felt sick, in fact, she felt very sick . . . oh God . . . She leant over, and her last cup of tea came up and sprayed over the pavement. She shuddered and leant her head against one of the cool brick columns that were supporting a bridge that spanned the road. She was reminded of the line from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. "What's wrong with being drunk? Ask a glass of water."

'You alright Love?' A concerned passer-by asked.

'Hmmm? Oh, yeah, thanks, just a bit of an upset stomach. Sorry, I don't normally throw up in public.' She straightened up, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. It felt like the motion sickness that she'd experienced once when she was a child on a rough ferry crossing to the Isle of Wight.

Where was she, where was the TARDIS, and most importantly, where was the Doctor? Moments before, they'd been in an old house, and now she was on a shopping street somewhere. She looked around, trying to get her bearings, but although she felt as though she was still in London, the shops didn't quite look right.

She walked along the street and looked in the window of an electrical retailer, and got her first indication that something was wrong. The prices were in pounds, shillings, and pence, she had only ever known the decimal monetary system that was introduced before she was born, and all the televisions were old fashioned and black and white.

'What the hell?' She looked around as panic started to grip her. 'Excuse me,' she called to the man who had asked if she was alright. 'You didn't see a man in a brown pinstriped suit and unruly hair did you?'

He looked up and down the street. 'No, sorry Love, haven't seen anyone like that. Did you lose him?'

'Yeah, it must have been when I stopped to . . . never mind, I'll catch up with him,' she said with a smile. The stranger nodded and carried on down the street.

'Right, don't panic,' she told herself. 'Think, what would the Doctor do?' And then she had a random thought, "I wonder what Rose would have done". Was she still jealous of the ghost of his previous lover? Ignoring the distracting thoughts, she tried to marshal her thoughts, she needed information.

"Where am I, when am I, and where the hell is Wester Drumlin?" She thought to herself. The first two would be fairly easy to find out; she walked down the street to look for a street name. In London, all the signs had the borough that they were in, but she didn't need it, because she came to an underground station.

'Brixton,' she said to herself with relief; that was the 'where' sorted, now for the when. She carried on walking until she came to a newsagent, with the newspapers in clear plastic displays. It was Tuesday, 18th March, 1969.

She started to feel sick again as the realisation set in that she was lost and alone in 1969, with no hope of getting home if she didn't find the Doctor. But wait a minute, she had a super charged phone, she realised. She reached into her pocket, took out the phone, and flipped it open; it said 'no signal'.

'Oh come on,' she said in desperation. The Doctor had told her that she could phone anywhere in the universe. What he hadn't told her was that she had to be in range of the exchange, which in this case, was the TARDIS.

'Urrgh.' She slapped the phone shut and stuffed it back in her pocket. Right, she was on her own, so she had to try and find the Doctor on her own, and to do that, she would have to think like him. "Hah! Good luck with that", she thought to herself. The only thing she could think of was to find Wester Drumlin, and hope that he would look for her there, and she knew the exact person to ask for directions.

She looked up and down the street, searching for the distinctive, black, conical helmet of a London beat bobby. If you wanted to know the time, or get directions, you asked a policeman, only there never seemed to be one around when you needed one. There were plenty of people about, and she focussed on a woman who had two small children in tow.

'Excuse me, have you seen a policeman, I think I've had my purse stolen,' Martha said, not really having to act distressed, the way she was feeling.

'Oh dear, that's awful,' the woman said. 'Pickpockets I'll bet, try down the road Luv, the station's down there at the end.' The woman was pointing up Brixton Road, in the direction Martha was already heading.

'Thank you.' She went the short distance up the road, and saw the station on the corner of Gresham Road. She went through the glass door, and approached the Desk Sergeant. She was close to tears, and started blurting out her words.

'I've lost my purse, it may have been stolen, and it had all my money in it, and I'm new to the area, and I lost my friend, and the address was in my purse, and I'm lost, and I don't know what to do,' she wailed.

'Oh dear, there, there,' the sergeant said soothingly 'Don't get yourself all upset Miss, I'm sure we'll be able to find your friend's address, let's take a few details, and I'll see what we can do.'

Martha told him about losing the Doctor on Brixton Road, feeling ill, getting lost, and realising that she didn't have her purse. He was writing it down on a notepad.

'Can you remember anything about the house where your friend lives?' he asked her.

'Only the name, Wester Drumlin.'

'That's quite a distinctive name, it's not on my beat, but I'm sure it'll be on someone's beat.'

'Oh thank you,' she said with relief.

After fifteen minutes of phone calls, and making enquiries, the Desk Sergeant wrote the address on a piece of paper for her.

'There you are Miss, and I've drawn a little map on the back for you,' he said helpfully.

'Oh, thank you SO much,' she said, taking the piece of paper. She said goodbye, and left the police station, starting the half hour long walk to Wester Drumlin.


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter 29**

The Doctor was leaning over, with his hands on his knees, taking some deep breaths. Travel through the Vortex without a capsule was quite unpleasant, as all your cells were distorted from three dimensions, into four, and then back to three again.

To the side of the TARDIS, he had glimpsed a statue with its face covered, and knew instantly where Martha had gone, and he also knew that even with his superior Gallifreyan reflexes, he didn't stand a chance of avoiding the Silent Assassin that would be behind him.

He took a deep breath and stood up, scanning the terrain, and trying to work out how far he'd been pushed through time and space.

He sniffed the air. 'Still in London then,' he said to himself. '1969 if I'm not wrong . . . which I'm not.'

He stepped out of the bushes onto a footpath in a park, looking left and right. There were a few people walking dogs, and a woman feeding bread to the ducks on a boating lake. He reached into his inside jacket pocket, and took out his sonic screwdriver. If Martha had been transported to 1969, then it would be a simple matter of locating her mobile phone signal, because there weren't any other mobile phones around in 1969.

'Ah-ha, direction, north by northeast, range, two point five seven five kilometres.' He started walking in as straight a direction as he could towards Martha's phone. At the gates to the park, he looked at the black sign with white writing. 'Welcome to DULWICH PARK, Court Lane Gate'.

He headed north, following the signal from her phone, and stopped briefly at a newsagent on Lordship Lane, to look at the date on the newspapers, it was Wednesday, 19th March 1969. He had no idea how long Martha had been here, he only hoped that the Weeping Angels had similar energy levels, which meant that he and Martha would be transported by a similar amount.

He was concerned about her, because although she was smart, and good in a crisis, she hadn't been brought up on a council estate like Rose, and he didn't know how street smart she was. The good news was that she was within a few kilometres of him, which meant that she should also have been within a few days of him.

The sonic didn't lead him to Wester Drumlin as he expected, but led him to Grove Hill Road. He stopped outside a four storey, utilitarian building built of beige brick. 'Salvation Army. Springfield Lodge' the sign outside read.

'Oh good girl,' he said with pride. It appeared Martha was more capable than he thought, she'd found a hostel, a "soup kitchen" for the homeless and those down on their luck, and at the moment, that described them perfectly.

During his fifth incarnation in 1865, he had met William and Catherine Booth, a couple of devout Methodist ministers, when they were despairing about the plight of the poor and homeless. He had suggested an army of volunteers, doing Gods work and looking after his flock. The Booth's had seen this meeting as a message from God, and the East London Christian Mission was born.

The Doctor walked into the reception hall, and a black uniformed young man approached.

'Hello there,' he said pleasantly. 'Welcome to Springfield Lodge.'

'Er, thank you very much,' the Doctor said with a smile. 'I'm actually looking for a friend of mine.'

The adherent looked him up and down, seeing the old, brown pinstriped suit, brown coat, the white converse on his feet, and came to a conclusion. 'Please don't be embarrassed, we do not judge; only the Lord can do that. We offer help to those who need it.'

'Glad to hear it,' he said with a cheery smile. 'Bill and Cath would be very proud of you, now about that friend of mine, a young, dark skinned lady . . . would have arrived, ooh, in the last couple of days.'

'You're Martha's friend, the Doctor?' The adherent asked in surprise.

'DOCTOR!'

He turned to see Martha running towards him. 'Oh thank God,' she cried, hugging him around the neck. 'You found my message then.'

He picked her up and swung her around, before putting her back down. 'Er, what message? I just locked onto your phone signal.'

'Hah!' she laughed and cried at the same time, wiping tears from her cheek. 'The police found Wester Drumlin for me, and I went and waited for you, all day yesterday. When you didn't show up, I scratched my name on the pavement, with an arrow pointing you to this place.'

He looked at her with raised eyebrows, and a big smile. 'Brilliant!'

'And I've been running a minor injuries clinic for the homeless this morning in payment for a bed for the night and my food.'

'Absolutely brilliant!'

'I must apologise for my assumption Doctor,' the young adherent said.

'Nah, no apology necessary, I'm just glad I found Martha. A cup of tea would be nice though, after walking all that way, I'm parched.'

'Come through to the food hall, I'll pour you one out of the urn,' Martha said, hugging his arm and guiding him through the door.

The Doctor sat at a table, and took the purple, plastic folder out of his coat pocket, that was given to him by Sally Sparrow. Martha brought the teas over, and sat beside him.

'What you got there?'

'Well, its 1969, we're stuck, and this is our ticket out of here.'

They sat at the table, drinking tea, and reading Sally Sparrow's account of the events that would happen at Wester Drumlin in thirty eight years time. The Doctor would read a page, and then hand it over for Martha to read, her mouth open in disbelief for most of it.

'This is mental . . . I mean, we're reading about something that hasn't happened yet, and about things we'll do to influence that thing that hasn't happened yet,' she said with a frown.

'Hmm, I know, we'll have to be very careful that we don't cause a paradox,' he told her, deep in thought. 'We're going to need some money to get the TARDIS back.'

While they were finishing their tea, and discussing the transcript, a middle aged man in uniform approached them.

'Hello Martha, thank you for running that little clinic this morning, our guests are very grateful to you, and I see you found your friend.'

'Oh, hello Captain, yes, although he found me if truth be known. Doctor, this is Captain Hanson, who took me in last night and gave me shelter,' she said as they stood to greet the man.

'Captain,' the Doctor said as he shook his hand.

'Doctor, doctor who?'

'Just the Doctor,' he said in his usual explanation.

'Really, THE Doctor?' he said with raised eyebrows, as though he had stumbled upon a mystery.

'Yes, is there a problem?' The Doctor asked.

'No, it's just that in the journal of William Booth, our founder, it's mentioned that he met a man called 'the Doctor', a man of such character and compassion, that he was compelled to take action to alleviate the suffering of the poor and the homeless.'

The Doctor smiled a contented smile. 'Really, fancy that, mentioned in despatches so to speak, good old Bill.'

'I was wondering if it was a title bestowed upon a secret order, because from what Martha was telling me, you too are a man of character and compassion.'

'Yeahhh . . . it's . . . complicated,' he said, smiling at Martha. 'A man of character and compassion, really?'

Martha gave him an embarrassed smile. 'His words, not mine.'

Turning back to the captain, his face went serious. 'Captain, I wonder if this man of character could impose on your hospitality. We need a place to stay for a few days, while we sort out a few problems that could cause a global catastrophe.'

'Well, I suppose . . .'

'I mean, we are homeless, and we haven't got a penny to our name, at the moment. However, when Martha gets a job, we'll be able to pay for food and accommodation.'

'Job, what job?' Martha asked in surprise.

'Apparently, it's a job in a shop, according to the transcript, and we need to buy some decorating materials, some electronic equipment for later on. Oh, and I have to film my part of the transcript for the DVD.'

'Electronics?' Captain Hanson said as a question. 'Do you have technical skills Doctor?'

'You could say that, yes,' he replied cautiously.

'Then I think I may be able to supply a solution to your dilemma. We have thrift stores, which take donated items and sell them to fund our operation. Would you Martha, consent to work in one of our shops, and Doctor, would you repair some of the donated electrical items so that we could sell them?'

The Doctor looked at Martha and grinned. 'Brilliant! Captain, you've got yourself a deal,' he said as he shook his hand.

* * *

A week later, the Doctor was in a small photographic studio, where you could record your own video onto 16mm film. He started the camera, smiled at Martha behind the camera, and sat in front of an autocue, with the 16mm movie camera behind it. He put on his glasses and started reading the script in his head, and then speaking his responses.

'Yup. That's me,' he said, after reading 'LARRY: Okay. There he is. SALLY: The Doctor. LARRY: Who's the Doctor? SALLY: He's the Doctor'.

'Yes, I do,' he said.

'Yup, and this.' He nodded his head to the side.

He frowned. 'Are you going to read out the whole thing?

'I'm a time traveller. Or I was. I'm stuck in 1969.'

"Hang on", Martha thought, this isn't all about him. She moved from behind the camera and in to view of the lens. 'We're stuck. All of space and time, he promised me. Now I've got a job in a shop. I've got to support him!'

He tried to keep track of the transcript, and pointed at the camera. 'Martha?'

'Sorry,' she said sullenly, and moved back behind the camera.

'Quite possibly.' He continued his one sided conversation. 'Afraid so . . . Thirty eight . . . Er, ah, yeah, people don't understand time. It's not what you think it is,' he said, in response to Sally asking him to explain how he can be speaking to her from thirty eight years in the past. He had to be careful, if she knew too much, it might influence her actions.

'Complicated . . . Very complicated.'

He paused, as he thought about how best to explain time travel. 'People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey . . . stuff.' That didn't go well.

'It got away from me, yeah . . . Well, I can hear you . . . Well, not hear you, exactly, but I know everything you're going to say . . . Look to your left,' he said, nodding his head to his right.

He continued reading the transcript, nodding his head in agreement, and then pointed at the autocue. 'I've got a copy of the finished transcript. It's on my autocue.'

'I told you. I'm a time traveller. I got it in the future,' he said in a matter of fact voice.

'Yeahhh. Wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey.' He waved his hand back and forth in dismissal.

'What matters is, we can communicate,' he said, finger and thumb tip together. 'We have got big problems now. They have taken the blue box, haven't they? The angels have the phone box . . . Creatures from another world . . . Only when you see them . . . The lonely assassins, they used to be called. No one quite knows where they came from, but they're as old as the universe, or very nearly, and they have survived this long because they have the most perfect defence system ever evolved. They are quantum-locked. They don't exist when they're being observed. The moment they are seen by any other living creature, they freeze into rock. No choice. It's a fact of their biology. In the sight of any living thing, they literally turn to stone. And you can't kill a stone. Of course, a stone can't kill you either. But then you turn your head away, then you blink, and oh yes it can.' He hoped that explanation was sufficient to make them realise how much danger they were in.

'That's why they cover their eyes. They're not weeping. They can't risk looking at each other. Their greatest asset is their greatest curse. They can never be seen. The loneliest creatures in the universe. And I'm sorry. I am very, very sorry. It's up to you now . . . The blue box, it's my time machine. There is a world of time energy in there they could feast on forever, but the damage they could do could switch off the sun. You have got to send it back to me.'

He read 'SALLY: How? How?' in his head and paused.

'Aaaand that's it, I'm afraid. There's no more from you on the transcript, that's the last I've got. I don't know what stopped you talking, but I can guess. They're coming. The angels are coming for you. But listen, your life could depend on this. Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink . . . good luck.'

'And cut,' Martha said, stopping the camera. 'Was that everything?'

'For now, yes, I'll have to encode some digital information onto the audio track for the TARDIS, so that she'll initiate security protocol seven one two when the recording is taken on board.'

'Seven one two?'

'Yeah, single journey that will lock onto my Artron energy signature, like a homing device.'

'Clever,' she said with a smile. 'Come on, dinner's on me.'

'Soup and bread, can't wait.' They left the studio, and went through to the reception area, where he handed the slip of paper to the receptionist. The film would be processed, and ready for collection in a couple of days.

'So how much longer have I got to work in this shop then?' Martha asked, as they walked to the bus stop.

'Well, we need to buy some wallpaper and paste, and I need to finish the temporal disturbance detector, to locate Billy Shipton when he appears, I don't know, maybe another week.'

'Oh great,' she said with disappointment.

'It could be worse, there was this one time where we ended up on a prison planet, Justica. Rose had to work in a laundry; she needed some serious moisturiser to get her hands back to normal after that one.'

There was that ghost again, haunting them, she thought. Mind you, working in a prison laundry, and still standing by him, she deserved some respect for that. Maybe she'd been a bit harsh in her judgement of his ex, letting her jealousy get in the way. After all, if she'd survived half of what Martha had been through, and still come back for more, she must have been one tough cookie.


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter 30**

Detective Inspector Billy Shipton staggered backwards against the wall of the alleyway and slid down to the ground. He was dizzy and nauseous, and he could hear a ringing, beeping, dinging in his ears. No, wait a minute, he could actually hear a beeping and a ding, and it was getting closer.

'Welcome,' a "too cheerful for how he was feeling" voice said.

'Where am I?' he asked the tall, thin man in the brown coat, who was listening to a single earpiece plugged into a retro looking radio.

'Nineteen sixty nine. Not bad, as it goes. You've got the moon landing to look forward to,' the spiky haired man said.

'Oh, the moon landing's brilliant. We went four times . . . back when we had transport,' the dark skinned woman said accusingly.

'Working on it,' the man said.

'How did I get here?' Billy asked him.

'The same way we did. The touch of an angel. Same one, probably, since you ended up in the same year.'

Billy tried to stand. 'No, no. No, no, no, don't get up. Time travel without a capsule. Nasty. Catch your breath. Don't go swimming for half an hour.' The tall man climbed through the red guard rails, and sat down beside him.

'I don't. I can't,' he mumbled in confusion.

'Fascinating race, the Weeping Angels,' the man said, looking up into the night sky. 'The only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely. No mess, no fuss, they just zap you into the past and let you live to death. The rest of your life used up and blown away in the blink of an eye. You die in the past, and in the present they consume the energy of all the days you might have had. All your stolen moments. They're creatures of the abstract. They live off potential energy.'

Billy screwed his face up. 'What in God's name are you talking about?'

The woman looked down at him. 'Trust me. Just nod when he stops for breath.'

'Tracked you down with this.' The man held up a 1960's radio, with a recording reel rotating on it. 'This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff. Also, it can boil an egg at thirty paces, whether you want it to or not, actually, so I've learned to stay away from hens. It's not pretty when they blow.'

'I don't understand. Where am I?' Billy asked angrily. He was in shock, only moments ago he'd been in basement garage of the station.

'1969, like he says,' the woman told him.

'Normally, I'd offer you a lift home, but somebody nicked my motor. So I need you to take a message to Sally Sparrow,' the man said.

Sally Sparrow, what had she got to do with all this? He'd only asked her for her phone number. He realised that the man was still talking, his voice now tinged with sadness.

'And I'm sorry, Billy, I am very, very sorry . . . It's going to take you a while.'

'How long?' Billy asked.

'We'll talk about that later maybe,' the man said, starting to stand up.

Billy grabbed his arm firmly. 'How long?'

The tall, thin man, with spiky hair, gave him such a sad look, which gave him the answer, even before he spoke. 'A life time.'

'Who are you people, how do you know all this?'

'I'm Martha,' the woman said holding her hand out to be shaken. 'And this is the Doctor.'

'Doctor who?'

'Just the Doctor,' Martha said.

They helped him to his feet, and made sure the dizziness had passed.

'Come on, we've got you a bed for the night, and then in the morning, we can discuss the future.'

In the morning, they had breakfast together, where the Doctor and Martha tried to explain what was happening to Billy, and what would happen. With breakfast finished, they sat drinking a cup of tea whilst the Doctor started to brief Billy on what he needed to know.

'I've written the things you need to know in this notebook,' the Doctor told him, taking a small, paperback notebook out of a small holdall. 'Keep it safe, and try and memorise everything in it.'

'What's in it, does it tell my future?'

The Doctor frowned, trying to think of the correct phrase. 'More of a guide to your future. There are some definite no-no's, like Sally Sparrow, DO NOT try to contact her before the allotted time.'

'Which is?' Billy asked, raising his eyebrows.

The Doctor hesitated, his face sad. 'I'm sorry Billy . . . but it's the day you die. If you try and contact her before then, you'll create a causal feedback loop paradox, and tear a hole in the fabric of space and time, which will destroy two thirds of the universe.'

'Just nod,' Martha said helpfully.

'The same goes for historic events from now until 2007, stay out of them, let them happen. I take care of anything that needs to be prevented.'

'Really,' Billy said sceptically.

'Yeah, really. Remember Ten Downing Street being hit by an Exocet? That was me.'

'We were put on terror alert when that happened,' Billy told him.

'Sorry about that, had to stop aliens from taking over the Earth. Oh, and the ghosts turning into robots, fighting the flying pepper pots in the skies around Canary Wharf . . . hang on, that sounds like a pop group.'

'What does?' Martha asked in confusion.

'The Flying Pepper pots, you should write that down Billy . . . sorry, where was I? Oh yes, Canary Wharf; that was me sending them to Hell . . . me and Rose . . .'

Martha noticed that look on his face again, the one he always had when he thought about "her".

'Is that when she left?' Martha asked quietly, reaching out and holding his hand.

He looked at her hand, holding his, and then at her concerned face. He nodded silently, and then turned to face Billy. 'Just let things happen as you remember them.'

'Okay,' Billy said, thumbing through the notebook. 'What about my career, will I be able to pick up where I left off?'

The Doctor shook his head. 'People aren't as enlightened as they are in the twenty first century, prejudice is rife I'm afraid.'

Martha saw a flash of anger in Billy's eyes. 'Hey, you should try being a woman my colour in 1913, it was a nightmare.'

'1913?'

'Er, yeah, long story, anyway Billy-Boy, you get into publishing,' the Doctor said, reaching into his pocket and taking out a roll of notes. 'Take this money, and spend the day looking for a job. We've got some decorating to do, so we'll see you back here this evening for the final briefing.'

'Hey, that's my money!' Martha said in protest, she'd worked for days in the charity shop to earn that.

'And after this evening, we won't need it,' the Doctor told her.

'What, it's happening tonight?' she asked excitedly.

'Yep, yesterday, the owners of Wester Drumlin went away on a luxury holiday they won in a competition . . . Funny that, I don't think they even entered a competition.'

'How could you possibly know that?' Martha asked.

'Because I thought of it and it happened, which means that when we get the TARDIS back, I arrange for them to win a holiday competition.'

'That's brilliant!' she exclaimed.

'TARDIS?' Billy asked.

They both looked at him. 'It's complicated,' they said together.

* * *

Whilst Martha had been working in the shop yesterday, the Doctor had staked out the house, and watched as the occupants loaded cases into a taxi, and drove away. He'd casually strolled across the road, walked through the wrought iron gates, and 'sonicked' the kitchen door at the back of the house. In the living room, he'd peeled off some of the blue and gold 'fleur-de-lis' patterned wallpaper, taking it to a decorating store to get a match.

And now, here he was again, with Martha, a holdall full of rolls of wallpaper, a packet of paste, scissors, a scraper, a wooden spoon, some brushes, and a pack of wax crayons. They stood, looking at the regency fireplace, with the candelabra light fittings on the wall, and the ripped corner of paper that the Doctor had taken yesterday.

'Right, I'll start stripping the rest of the paper off, you go and see if you can find a bucket to mix the paste in,' he said as he dropped the holdall on the floor, and took out the scraper.

'Okay,' she said, and went back to the kitchen, where they had entered the house. She headed for the sink, and checked the cupboard underneath, where she found a bucket full of cleaning materials. She carefully put the items on the kitchen table; half filled the bucket, and went back to the living room.

The Doctor had made really good progress, and standing on a table that he had moved over to the fireplace, he was carefully removing the uppermost parts of the paper. Martha reached into the holdall, and took out the packet of paste, tearing it open and pouring the flakes into the bucket and stirring it around with the wooden spoon.

The Doctor took out the packet of crayons, and selected a black one before approaching the wall.

'Here we go then, time to write Sally the message,' he said as he started to write "BEWARE THE".

'Hang on, how do you know that they're not going to redecorate?' Martha asked.

He finished "WEEPING ANGEL", and looked at her as though she had dribbled down her top; Rose would have known the answer to that one.

'Because I know Sally Sparrow saw this message,' he said simply.

'Oh yeah . . . sorry.'

He smiled at her kindly. 'Don't be, you're doing great. Thinking in the fourth dimension isn't easy, and you're picking it up really well.'

'Really? Thank you,' she said. 'I've been wondering, how does this work then, y'know, when does the TARDIS come back?'

He wrote "OH, AND DUCK" as he explained. 'When this message is complete, and we've covered it with wallpaper, we go back to Billy and give him the list of seventeen DVD's and the reel of film that he will eventually record onto those DVD's. When we do that, the circle is complete, Sally and Larry do their bit, they put the DVD in the TARDIS console, and it appears in front of us as Billy takes the list and reel off us.' He wrote "NO REALLY, DUCK!"

'Wow! How do you do that?' she asked in admiration.

'Years of practice,' he said as he finished "SALLY SPARROW DUCK, NOW". 'Okay, let's cut the paper to size.'

By the end of the afternoon, Wester Drumlins was back to how it had been before the owners had left. No one would be any the wiser that a message had been left on the wall over the fireplace.

Back at Springfield House, the Doctor and Martha sat in the dining hall, drinking tea and waiting for Billy to return. The Doctor spotted Captain Hanson, and called him over.

'Captain Hanson, I just wanted to let you know that we'll be leaving this evening, and we wanted to thank you for generosity and kindness, you're a credit to that uniform.'

'We'll be sorry to see you go, you've been a breath of fresh air around here, and an inspiration.' He shook the Doctor's hand, and kissed Martha on the cheek.

'And I can say with confidence, that William and Catherine Booth would be proud to see their mission in such good hands,' the Doctor said.

'It's strange, but when you speak of our founder, you sound as though you knew him,' Hanson said.

The Doctor smiled at him. 'Yeah, I suppose it does . . . but that would be impossible, wouldn't it?'

Hanson laughed. 'In my line of work, the impossible is easy; it's miracles that take a bit of effort.'

The Doctor nodded in agreement, Hanson was right, miracles were hard work. At that point, Billy Shipton walked into the dining hall and walked over to them, he had a bemused smile on his face.

'How did it go Billy?' Martha asked.

'Well, that's the weird thing,' he said frowning. 'I went to the Job Centre to register, except it's called the Employment Exchange in this day and age, and then it hit me, I don't exist here, no birth certificate, no National Insurance number, no NHS number, nothing.'

'Oh God, I hadn't thought about that, what happened?'

'I gave them my name, the day, and month of my birth, and then hesitated about the year, I mean, it was . . . or will be 1980, but they found me, born on the eighth of October, 1942. I have a National Insurance number, and an NHS number, I mean; tell me, how can that be?'

Martha looked at the Doctor, and he waggled his eyebrows with a smile. 'I think you'll find you've got a bank account as well, with some funds in it to get you started.'

Billy just looked at them, stunned into silence. Martha hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek, before walking over to the Doctor. 'Is there no end to your talents?'

'Not found one yet,' he said with a cheeky grin. 'Right then Billy-Boy, can we have a word outside, it's time for us to be moving on.'

They walked out of the front of the building, and around the corner, out of sight of anyone in the hostel. The Doctor took a piece of paper out of his pocket, along with a yellow foil packet.

'This is a list of seventeen films that you will publish on DVD's in the future,' he said handing it over.

Billy looked at the list and laughed. 'These are mostly 'chick flicks'.' And then he had a realisation. 'These are Sally Sparrows DVD's, aren't they, how can you possibly know this?'

'Yes they are, I can't tell you how I know, and you can't tell her either Billy. One day she'll work it out for herself,' the Doctor told him quietly.

'And now, the final piece of the puzzle.' He held out the yellow foil packet. 'This is a recording that has to be hidden on those seventeen DVD's, it's imperative that it's reproduced perfectly.'

Billy took the offered packet, and they heard the sound of time and space being bent out of shape.

'Ah, that's our ride.' He held his hand out, one last time, and Billy shook it. 'Thank you Billy Shipton, you've saved the Earth from destruction by a quantum locked life form.'

Billy looked, open mouthed at the TARDIS as it appeared. 'It was yours all along . . . the dummy police box . . . it was yours.'

The Doctor patted the wooden exterior with affection. 'Yep, best set of wheels in the universe.'

Martha gave Billy a long, long hug. 'I'm sorry you can't come with us, but like he said, we need you to save the universe, and there aren't many who can say they've done that.'

'It's certainly something to put on my C.V,' he said with a smile.

Martha released him from the hug, and the Doctor opened the TARDIS door. She went inside and the Doctor stood in the doorway, looking at Billy.

'Doctor, your notebook says that I'll meet Sally again . . . on the day that I die . . .'

'Yeah, you have a long and happy life to live before then, so don't be too eager, but when you meet her, you'll have until the rain stops.' Billy nodded his understanding, and the Doctor nodded back. Without another word, he stepped inside the TARDIS and closed the door.

He walked up the ramp to the console and started the time rotor; Martha stroked one of the coral struts.

'Oh it's SO good to have her back again,' she said.

'Yeah,' he said with a smile. 'Why don't you go and freshen up, while I'll go and rig a holiday competition and change the date of birth on Mr. Shipton's records.'

She smiled at him, and went through to the corridor that led to her room. Twenty minutes, and a change of clothes later, she returned to the console room. The Doctor was just in the process of landing the TARDIS.

'So where are we?' she asked.

'Cardiff,' he replied.

"Cardiff?" Not very alien or exotic she thought.

'Ah, but the thing about Cardiff, it's built on a rift in time and space, just like California and the San Andreas Fault, but the rift bleeds energy. Every now and then I need to open up the engines, soak up the energy and use it as fuel.'

'So it's a pit stop?'

'Exactly. Should only take twenty seconds . . . the rift's been active,' he said, deep in thought.

'Wait a minute. They had an earthquake in Cardiff a couple of years ago, was that you?'

'Bit of trouble with the Slitheen, a long time ago . . . lifetimes.' He remembered Rose . . . and Jack . . . and Mickey, all gone now.

'I was a different man back then.' He had a different face, a different body, and he was jealous of the relationship that Rose had with Mickey. Martha was quiet, as she saw that look on his face again. Cardiff obviously held some painful memories for him.

'Finito. All powered up,' he announced, and moved around the console. As he did, he saw a familiar figure running towards them on the monitor. He could feel the wrongness of Jack Harkness, and so could the TARDIS. He pulled down the materialise/dematerialise lever, and started the time rotor, looking up and smiling as it pumped up and down. Suddenly, there was an explosion on the console, and the TARDIS lurched, throwing them to the floor.

'Whoa! What's that?' Martha asked in a panic.

He climbed to his feet and braced his foot on the console as the TARDIS bucked. 'We're accelerating into the future. The year one billion . . . five billion . . . five trillion . . . Fifty trillion . . . ? What . . . ? The year one hundred trillion? That's impossible.'

'Why? What happens then?'

'W, w, w, we're going to the end of the universe.'


	31. Chapter 31

**Chapter 31**

Martha was in the year one hundred trillion, on a planet called Malcassairo, standing in a laboratory constructed by a man called Professor Yana. The Doctor was below a rocket in the silo, with a man she had just met, Jack Harkness; a man it seemed who couldn't die.

After a sabotage attempt, Jack had held two power cables together, to jump start the vent override, killing himself in the process. Whilst trying to resuscitate him, he had suddenly come back to life.

'We lost picture when that thing flared up,' she told the Professor and his assistant Chanto. 'Doctor, are you there?' She'd managed to get the sound back from the chamber under the rocket, but not the video.

'Receiving, yeah. He's inside,' he said, meaning Jack had entered the radiation filled chamber.

'And still alive?'

'Oh, yes,' he said with obvious pleasure.

'But he should evaporate. What sort of a man is he?' Professor Yana asked.

'I've only just met him,' Martha told him. 'The Doctor sort of travels through time and space and picks people up. God, it makes us sound like stray dogs.' She thought about that, compared to Rose, his beloved companion, that's exactly what she was. 'Maybe we are,' she thought out loud.

And then she started eavesdropping on a conversation; she couldn't help it. In the last few hours, she'd learnt more about the Doctor than she had in all the weeks she'd been travelling with him, oh, except for that time on New New Earth, when she'd refused to move until he told her about his home world.

And it was all down to this incredible man who used to travel with him, Jack Harkness. He travelled in the TARDIS at the same time as her absent rival Rose did, but it must have been before they split up. And about that split, something didn't sound right.

'Just got to ask . . . the Battle of Canary Wharf, I saw the list of the dead, it said Rose Tyler,' Jack had asked hesitantly.

'Oh, no! Sorry, she's alive,' the Doctor had replied with glee.

It seemed even Jack wasn't immune to the charms of this woman. 'You're kidding?!' he'd exclaimed, as though everything else was insignificant. It was as though the end of the universe and the end of humanity didn't matter, as long as "good old Rose" was safe and sound.

But then the Doctor had said something that got her thinking. 'Parallel world, safe and sound . . . and Mickey, and her mother.'

What did he mean by that? She hadn't run back to her family like she'd thought, it sounded as though her family had been sent away with her to a "parallel world", what ever that was. Had Rose been taken from him, rather than having left of her own accord? That would certainly explain that look he had on his face every time he thought about her.

Jack had hugged the Doctor at the news 'Oh, yes!' he'd exclaimed in joy. And she couldn't help herself, 'Good old Rose' she'd muttered under her breath, still haunted by the ghost of Rose Tyler. Seeing the two of them standing there hugging, had got Martha thinking.

'But the thing is, how come you left him behind, Doctor?' she'd asked him. He'd seemed a bit evasive; as though he was reluctant to tell her, or was it Jack he didn't want to tell? "I was busy" is all he would say, but that wasn't good enough for her. 'Is that what happens, though, seriously? Do you just get bored with us one day and disappear?'

'Not if you're blonde' Jack had shot back, and was that a bit of resentment from him as well, was he as jealous of the amazing Rose Tyler as she was? 'Oh, she was blonde? Oh, what a surprise!' she'd thought out loud. That had obviously rattled the Doctor, because he angrily came back with 'You two! We're at the end of the universe, all right? Right at the edge of knowledge itself and you're busy blogging!'

And then, just when she thought she'd seen everything, she found a jar in Jack's rucksack. 'Oh, my God. You've got a hand? A hand in a jar, a hand in a jar in your bag'. But that wasn't the best of it. 'But that . . . that . . . that's my hand' the Doctor had said in amazement. Apparently, Jack had been using it to detect when the Doctor was in range.

Chanto had said something quite sweet. 'Chan is this a tradition amongst your people tho?' She had this really odd way of speaking, saying 'chan' and 'tho' at the beginning and end of every sentence, but Martha was incredulous. I mean, she knew he was an alien, the two hearts kind of gave it away, but to grow a new hand . . . that was just too alien. What was he, an alien salamander, or earthworm or something?

'Not on my street,' she'd told Chanto with disgust. 'What do you mean, that's your hand? You've got both your hands, I can see them' she'd said to the Doctor. The he went all evasive again; typical, getting an answer out of him was like pulling teeth.

'Long story. I lost my hand Christmas Day, in a swordfight' he'd said as by way of explanation, as if that was good enough. 'What? And you grew another hand?' she pressed him. 'Er, yeah, yeah, I did . . . yeah' he'd said thoughtfully, and then smiled, trying to get off the subject, he wiggled his fingers and said 'hello'.

Come to think of it though, Jack had hinted that he looked different, when he recovered from his trip through the Vortex, as though he'd got a different face some how. The Doctor had just said 'Oh yes, the face . . . regeneration'. But then she remembered, the Doctor had asked him 'how did you know this was me?' He must have grown a new face as well!

And now, here she was, listening to a conversation between Jack and the Doctor, as Jack tried to connect the power couplings so that they could launch the rocket.

'When did you first realise?' she heard the Doctor ask Jack. She presumed he was talking about his immortality.

'Earth, 1892. Got in a fight in Ellis Island, a man shot me through the heart. Then I woke up. Thought it was kind of strange. But then it never stopped. Fell off a cliff, trampled by horses, World War One, World War Two, poison, starvation, a stray javelin.'

'Urgh,' She heard the Doctor suck in air in sympathy.

'In the end, I got the message. I'm the man who can never die. And all that time you knew.' She heard accusation and recrimination in his voice.

'That's why I left you behind. It's not easy even just looking at you, Jack, because you're wrong.'

'Thanks.'

'You are! I can't help it, I'm a Time Lord, it's instinct, it's in my guts. You're a fixed point in time and space. You're a fact, that's never meant to happen. Even the TARDIS reacted against you, tried to shake you off . . . flew all the way to the end of the universe just to get rid of you.'

'So what you're saying is that you're, er, prejudiced?'

'I never thought of it like that.'

'Shame on you.'

'Yeah.' She heard regret in that "yeah", as though he wasn't proud of what he'd done.

'Last thing I remember, back when I was mortal, I was facing three Daleks . . . death by extermination . . . And then I came back to life,' Martha heard Jack tell the Doctor. 'What happened?' "Ooh, good question" Martha thought.

He answered with one word, a name that told them everything. 'Rose.'

The green eyed demon of jealousy raised its ugly head again and started to gnaw away at Martha as she listened.

'I thought you'd sent her back home.' Martha was surprised at that; he'd sent away the woman he loved.

'She came back. Opened the heart of the TARDIS and absorbed the time vortex itself.'

'What does that mean, exactly?' Jack asked.

'No one's ever mean to have that power, if a Time Lord did that, he'd become a god . . . a vengeful god . . . But she was human; everything she did was so human.' Martha smiled at that statement. Rose sounded like such a caring person, that she had risked everything to save her friends . . . her love.

'She brought you back to life but she couldn't control it. She brought you back forever. That's something, I suppose. The final act of the Time War was life.'

'Do you think she could change me back?' Jack asked.

'I took the power out of her,' the Doctor said, and then paused. 'She's gone, Jack, she's not just living on a parallel world, she's trapped there . . . The walls have closed.'

So that was it, everything was clear now. His love, Rose Tyler was trapped in a parallel world, alive and living with her family.

'I'm sorry,' Jack whispered, his voice choked with emotion. Jack and Rose must have been really close she thought.

'Yeah.' Oh God, Martha could hear tears in his voice as he spoke. That simple "yeah", was so full of pain and loss and yearning, that it broke her heart.

'I went back to her estate, in the nineties, just once or twice. Watched her growing up. Never said hello. Timelines and all that.'

'Do you want to die?' the Doctor asked casually. There was that change of subject again when things got too painful for him to think about. Martha wondered if he'd considered going back to see her, but she thought the temptation to say hello would be too great.

'Oh, this one's a little stuck,' Jack said, he must have been talking about one of the coupling controls.

'Jack?' The Doctor wanted an answer to his question.

'I thought I did . . . I don't know. . . .But this lot . . . you see them out here surviving, and that's fantastic,' he said with pleasure.

'You might be out there, somewhere.'

'I could go meet myself.'

'Well, the only man you're ever going to be happy with.'

Jack laughed. 'This new regeneration, it's kind of cheeky,' Jack said in a flirty way.

'Hmm.' And then it was over. Jack had closed the final coupling and left the chamber, but Martha was grateful to him, because now she knew the truth, the truth that he was in love, the truth he would never admit to, even to himself.

* * *

'Hold still! Don't move! Hold it still!' The Doctor shouted as they leant against the laboratory door, trying to keep the Futurekind hoard from breaking in, and killing them.

'I'm telling you, it's broken. It hasn't worked for years,' Jack said as the Doctor 'sonicked' his Vortex manipulator.

'That's because you didn't have me. Martha, grab hold, now!' The Doctor held everyone's hand on the manipulator and activated it.

WHOP!

Martha experienced the same gut wrenching twisting of her atoms from three to four dimensions and back. 'Oh, my head.'

'Time travel without a capsule, that's a killer . . . argh,' the Doctor said as they staggered around in the alleyway. He headed for the street, and his companions set off after him.

'Still, at least we made it. Earth, twenty first century by the looks of it. Hah, talk about lucky,' Jack said, looking around at the architecture. Martha was hugging her stomach, struggling to keep up with the seasoned Vortex travellers.

'That wasn't luck, that was me,' the Doctor said tersely.

They found a pedestrian area, with stone seats set out for weary shoppers. Okay, they weren't shoppers, but they were weary.

'The moral is, if you're going to get stuck at the end of the universe, get stuck with an ex-Time Agent and his vortex manipulator,' Jack said light heartedly.

'But this Master bloke, he's got the TARDIS. He could be anywhere in time and space,' Martha said. She was still convinced that she'd heard his voice somewhere before when he'd said 'Anyway, why don't we stop and have a nice little chat while I tell you all my plans and you can work out a way to stop me . . . I don't think'.

'No, he's here,' the Doctor told them. 'Trust me.'

'Who is he, anyway? And that voice at the end, that wasn't the Professor,' she said.

'If the Master's a Time Lord, then he must have regenerated,' Jack told her.

'What does that mean?'

'It means he's changed his face, voice, body, everything . . . new man.' Jack had just confirmed what she'd suspected when the Doctor had asked Jack how he'd recognised him, and the extra hand that he'd grown.

And then she had another realisation, the hologram message she'd seen in the TARDIS labelled "Emergency Programme One, message for Rose", that was him before he changed, it had to be. Rose hadn't fallen in love with another man and run off with him, she knew that now, she'd fallen in love with another man and he'd changed into this man in front of her.

A homeless man was tapping a tin mug, begging for money, the four beat rhythm was somehow familiar to the Doctor and Martha, di di di dum, di di di dum. For Martha, it was on a subconscious level, a subliminal beat in every phone conversation she'd had on the Archangel Network. The Doctor instinctively knew the rhythm, and had it been a more organic sound, he would have recognised the lub dub lub dub, lub dub lub dub of his own hearts beats.

'Then how are we going to find him?' she asked.

'I'll know him, the moment I see him. Time Lords always do.'

Martha was absently looking at all the posters on the walls and lamp posts that said 'Saxon is your man'. 'But hold on, if he could be anyone, we missed the election . . . but it can't be.'

On a series of public screens in the pedestrian area, a newsreader was reporting on breaking news. 'Mister Saxon has returned from the Palace and is greeting the crowd inside Saxon Headquarters'. They watched the new Prime Minister walk down steps with his wife.

Martha had a sudden feeling of dread. 'I said I knew that voice . . . when he spoke inside the TARDIS. I've heard that voice hundreds of times, I've seen him, we all have, that was the voice of Harold Saxon.'

'That's him . . . he's Prime Minister!' the Doctor said, looking at the screen.

'Mister Saxon, this way, sir . . . come on, kiss for the lady, sir,' a photographer said.

'The Master is Prime Minister of Great Britain,' the Doctor repeated in disbelief. 'The Master and his wife?'

On the screen, the Master made an announcement. 'This country has been sick. This country needs healing. This country needs medicine. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that what this country really needs right now . . .' He looked at the screen, and the Doctor knew he was speaking to him. ' . . . is a Doctor.'


	32. Chapter 32

**Chapter 32**

Martha Jones handed over the money and picked up the bouquet of flowers off the counter. She stepped outside, took a deep breath, taking in the fragrance of the blooms, and looked up to the sky as she thought about the previous year.

One year, one whole year, she had walked the Earth, to tell her stories about the Doctor. How he was all fire and ice and rage. Like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun, ancient and forever. Burning at the centre of time, seeing the turn of the universe . . . he was wonderful . . . and she had loved him.

The number one wasn't enough to express what she'd been through for him, neither was the number twelve, the number of months that she'd travelled over five continents, meeting up with resistance cells and finding people cowering in the dark and hidden places, hoping against hope for a saviour to rescue them.

Fifty two weeks to visit some of the one hundred and ninety six countries on those continents, bringing hope and the promise of salvation. Three hundred and sixty five days of evading the Master's Unified Containment Forces to avoid capture, now that was getting more like it.

However, eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours of fear and trepidation, sleeping with one eye open, and never knowing when you would eat or drink again, to find some of the six billion people still alive . . . that number started to express what she'd been through.

And it had all been to get every human on the planet to think about the Doctor at one specific time, over six billion of them, because the Doctor needed Artron energy, the psionic-temporal energy that is the energy of thought and perception, the very stuff of History itself. And the atto-Omegas of energy that six billion minds could generate, linked by fifteen satellites, was immense.

The Doctor had glowed with the energy, and reversed the Master's accelerated ageing. He had risen into the air, his arms outstretched, looking everything like the Messiah, the saviour of the human race. And then, with some of that Time Lord magic, he changed time, and it had never happened!

Martha thought about that image, the rising into the air, the outstretched arms, and the glowing light; it couldn't be . . . could it? Had he done that before, maybe two thousand years ago . . . ? She shook her head, "nah, couldn't be".

She found her way to the nearby park where the Doctor said Professor Alison Docherty would be, and found her walking along the path. She ran up to her and presented the flowers for her to take.

'Just to say, I don't blame you,' Martha said, not that she could blame her for anything, it had never happened for the Professor, but for Martha, she had betrayed her to the Master because her son had been taken hostage to make her comply.

'But who are you?' The Professor asked in confusion. In the alternate timeline, the resistance knew that her son had been taken, and they'd created a story that Martha had been assembling a weapon that could kill the Master (as if the Doctor would let anything happen to the last of his people).

She left the baffled Professor, and walked back to the TARDIS, where the Doctor and Jack were waiting for her. They were still helping the TARDIS to fix the damage that the paradox machine had caused, and glanced at her as she walked up the ramp.

'And was the Professor completely clueless?' The Doctor asked her with a knowing smile.

'Yeah,' she said with a lopsided smile. 'But it made me feel better.'

The Doctor gave a single laugh. 'It reminds me of when we first met and I took my tie off in front of you in the street . . . you must have thought I was a nutter.'

Martha laughed as well and looked at Jack. 'Yeah, and I was right.'

She and Jack laughed as the Doctor frowned at them, and then smiled; it was good to see his friends laughing again after the year of hell that they'd been through.

'Right then, a quick stop off at the Rift for a top up, and then we can be on our way. He started the time rotor, and moved around the console adjusting the settings. The paradox machine had been drawing energy from the TARDIS while it allowed the future and the present to coexist, and now she needed to regain that lost energy.

The TARDIS had landed next to the cascading water feature where it normally parked, and they stepped out onto Roald Dahl Plass. The sky was cloudy, but it was warm and bright, they could hear the Herring Gulls in the bay.

'Come on, let's go, and grab some lunch in that restaurant out on the jetty,' Jack said. 'I'm buying.'

Martha linked arms with both of them, and they strolled down the Plass, and right onto Mermaid Quay, following it around to the short jetty, which they walked along and into the restaurant.

'This takes me back a bit,' Jack said, seeing the faraway look in the Doctor's eyes.

'Yeah,' the Doctor said absently, lost in his memories.

'What do you mean?' Martha asked. 'Were you here before?'

Jack knew the Doctor well enough to know he wouldn't open up, so he proceeded to tell her about the time they had refuelled here before, as the waitress brought their food, and they started to eat.

'Rose's boyfriend came down from London to see her while we were here. She told him she needed her passport of all things,' Jack said, grinning.

'Her boyfriend, but I thought . . .'

'So did Mickey . . . but everyone knew she was in love with someone else . . . everyone except this guy,' he said, nodding his head sideways towards the Doctor.

'Jack,' the Doctor said in a warning tone.

'What? I'm only telling it like it is. Anyway, we had a run in with a Slitheen called Margaret, who was a sneaky piece of work, and she managed to open the Rift.'

'Oh, you mentioned that, the earthquake . . . said you were a different man,' Martha said to the Doctor.

'Completely different man,' Jack said. 'All northern, with big ears, daft grin, and a really cool leather jacket.'

'The man in the message!' Martha said, everything was falling into place now. She remembered their conversation in the radiation chamber. "I thought you'd sent her back home" Jack had said, "She came back" the Doctor had replied. The message must have been for her when he sent her away.

The Doctor cleared his throat. 'Yeah, I'd left a message telling her to forget me and to get on with her life,' he said in a quiet, sad voice.

Martha looked at him in amazement. 'You really don't know much about women, do you?' She knew now, from what Jack had said that Rose was deeply and madly in love with the Doctor. That she'd invited Mickey to Cardiff all those years ago to do the decent thing and break up with him face to face. She was never going to forget him, she was never going to get on with her life, not while this incredible, gorgeous man was here, pining for her.

When Martha had first heard about his ex, she thought that she had run off with the man in the message, and that he was heartbroken that she had left him. She had run off with the man in the message, because the man in the message was him. And he was heartbroken that she had left him, because something happened that trapped her, her mother, and her old boyfriend in another universe.

'Anyway, after that, Mickey went back to London, and we went on to the stars,' Jack said, finishing the story.

'It was Kyoto actually, 1336,' the Doctor reminded him.

Martha shook her head as she finished her meal. 'I still can't get over the way you talk about travelling to the stars, or the past, or the future, like you're popping down the shops to pick up a loaf of bread, y'know, like it's the most ordinary thing in the world. To me it's still the most amazing and unbelievable thing that's ever happened to me.'

Both the Doctor and Jack were smiling. 'People's reactions to that are what keep us going,' the Doctor said. 'That never gets old.'

When they had all finished, Jack paid the bill, and they wandered back towards the Plass, and the waiting TARDIS. They stood by the red brick Pierhead Building, leaning on the railing, and looking at all the people in the Plass, going about their daily business, getting on with their lives.

'Time was, every single one of these people knew your name . . . now they've all forgotten you,' Martha said sadly, there would be no recognition of what he'd done for them, the risks he'd taken, the sacrifices he'd made.

'Good,' the Doctor said simply, sounding relieved. He couldn't travel like he did if everyone knew who he was.

'Back to work,' Jack said suddenly, climbing through the railing.

'I really don't mind, though . . . come with me,' the Doctor said softly to his old friend. He was becoming desensitised to his 'wrongness', and he wouldn't mind travelling with Jack again, they could reminisce about old times . . . about Rose.

'I had plenty of time to think that past year . . . the year that never was.' He looked over to the secret entrance to Torchwood Three, the last remaining outpost of the institute. 'And I kept thinking about that team of mine.' He looked back at them. 'Like you said, Doctor, responsibility.'

'Defending the Earth . . . can't argue with that,' he said. Jack had told him in the warehouse that the old Torchwood had gone, there were only a handful of them now, and he'd rebuilt it in his honour.

The Doctor grabbed Jack's arm and exposed the Vortex manipulator on his wrist. He took out his sonic screwdriver and disabled it.

'Hey, I need that,' Jack protested.

'I can't have you walking around with a time travelling teleport. You could go anywhere . . . twice,' he told him. 'The second time to apologise.'

'And what about me? Can you fix that? Will I ever be able to die?' Jack asked in desperation.

'Nothing I can do. You're an impossible thing, Jack.'

Jack laughed and gave him that perfect smile. 'Been called that before.' He turned and took a few steps, before turning and saluting them. 'Sir.' The Doctor touched his forelock. Jack winked at Martha. 'Ma'am.' She gave him a wave and smiled.

He took another step and turned again. 'But I keep wondering . . . what about ageing? 'Cos I can't die but I keep getting older. The odd little grey hair, you know?' he said pointing towards his head. 'What happens if I live for a million years?'

'I really don't know,' the Doctor drawled with humour.

Jack laughed 'Okay, vanity. Sorry . . . yeah, can't help it. Used to be a poster boy when I was a kid living on the Boeshane Peninsula. Tiny little place. I was the first one EVER to be signed up for the Time Agency. They were so proud of me. The Face of Boe, they called me, hah!' He had a melancholy air about him now. 'I'll see you.'

He finally turned and headed off towards Torchwood's secret entrance. Martha touched the Doctor's arm, a look of amazement on her face.

'No,' he said.

'It can't be,' she said as they watched the retreating figure of Jack Harkness.

'No. Definitely not. No.' Martha started laughing. 'No,' he said again, and started laughing himself. It all made perfect sense now.

'Come on, the TARDIS should have a full charge now.'

'Can you take me to Mum's?' she asked. 'I just want to see how they're coping.'

'Yeah, of course.'

He landed the TARDIS across the street from The Jones's house, and stood, leaning against the door, watching the family through the window. It looked like Clive and Francine were having another go at making their marriage work. At least something good had come out of the year that never was. "Good title Jack, well done" he thought to himself. Francine came to the window and they exchanged a look that didn't need words, she gave him an attempt at a sad smile, and his face said she was welcome.

He turned and entered the TARDIS, walking up the ramp, and throwing his coat over the coral. He silently looked at the console, the time rotor, and around the domed, vaulted ceiling, before sitting on the jump seat and putting his feet up on the console, waiting for Martha to say goodbye to her folks.

Martha came out the front door, her mobile to her ear. 'Yeah. Could you put me through? Hi, I'm looking for a Doctor Thomas Milligan.' He had been her underground contact when she came back to Britain after those eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours of travelling. She could hear him saying hello, it was his voice.

She was going to say hello, but he wouldn't know who she was, so she ended the call, smiling to herself; she could make his acquaintance another time, because she'd come to a decision, like many of his companions had in the past.

She recalled the passengers of the Brilliant, and how they had decided whether to party on in a time loop forever, or hitch a lift in the TARDIS to their destination. She had now arrived at her destination, and she couldn't do it anymore. It was time she stopped waiting for the Doctor and found a life of her own.

She was no longer jealous of a woman she'd never met, instead she envied her, because Rose Tyler had done something that none of his other companions had been able to do, she had managed to get inside the Doctor's emotional shield, and he'd fallen in love with her, and for that she deserved her respect.

'Right then, off we go. The open road. There is a burst of star fire right now over the coast of Meta Sigmafolio. Oh, the sky is like oil on water, fancy a look? Or back in time, we could, I don't know, Charles the Second? Henry the Eighth? I know, what about Agatha Christie? I'd love to meet Agatha Christie, I bet she's brilliant,' he said cheerfully as she walked up the ramp, and then he saw her face, and knew.

'Okay,' he said quietly, sadly, resigned to a life alone again. At least he'd had a year to come to terms with his loss.

'I just can't,' she said.

'Yeah.'

'Spent all these years training to be a doctor. Now I've got people to look after. They saw half the planet slaughtered and they're devastated. I can't leave them.'

'Of course not.' He understood that, and they stood there just looking at each other, and then he smiled. 'Thank you,' he said pulling her into a long hug. 'Martha Jones, you saved the world.'

'Yes, I did,' she said proudly 'I spent a lot of time with you thinking I was second best.' She poked him in the chest. 'But you know what . . . ? I am good.'

'Hmm,' he laughed with her.

'You going to be all right?'

'Always . . . yeah.'

'Right then,' she said finally. 'Bye.' She kissed him quickly on the cheek and left the TARDIS. So, that was that, he thought as he watched her walk down the ramp and out the door. He turned to the console, contemplating his next destination, when he heard the door open.

'Because the thing is, it's like my friend Vicky. She lived with this bloke, student housing, there were five of them all packed in, and this bloke was called Sean,' she said as she walked up the ramp.

'And she loved him. She did. She completely adored him. Spent all day long talking about him.'

'Is this going anywhere?' he asked, because he hadn't got a clue what she was going on about.

'Yes!' She'd had a year to think about this, and a few hours in Cardiff to put it all together. 'Because he never looked at her twice.' The Doctor looked guiltily at the floor.

'I mean, he liked her, but that was it . . . And she wasted years pining after him, years of her life, because while he was around, she never looked at anyone else . . . And I told her, I always said to her, time and time again, I said, get out.' He nodded his understanding of what she was saying, but what could he do? He was in love with someone else.

Martha now knew that she never stood a chance against the ghost of Rose Tyler. 'So this is me . . . getting out.'

She took her phone out of her pocket and threw it to him. 'Keep that, because I'm not having you disappear. If that rings, when that rings, you'd better come running. Got it?'

'Got it.'

'I'll see you again, mister.' They exchanged smiles, before she turned and left the TARDIS.

 **The End**


End file.
